Robbers Cave State Park OHV

Robbers Cave State Park encompasses 8,246 acres of the San Bois Mountains in Latimer County in the heart of Oklahoma's Ouachita Mountain country: one of Oklahoma's most distinctive and rugged state parks, named for the sandstone cave system in the park's sandstone buttes that legend holds was used as a hideout by outlaws including Jesse James, Belle Starr, and the Dalton Gang during the outlaw era of Indian Territory in the late 19th century. The park's OHV and equestrian trail system threads through the surrounding San Bois Mountain terrain on designated routes, giving riders access to the rocky oak-hickory-pine forest of the eastern Oklahoma Ouachita foothills, a landscape that is geologically and ecologically continuous with the Arkansas Ouachita system but less visited and less known. The San Bois Mountains are a series of sandstone ridges with the characteristic Ouachita east-west fold orientation, distinct from the north-south trending ridges of most mountain systems, and the trail network follows the ridge-to-hollow topography through the shortleaf pine and mixed-hardwood forest that covers the Latimer County mountain terrain. The cave system itself is a sandstone-walled shelter rather than a limestone cave, formed by the erosion of Pennsylvanian-age sandstone on the flanks of the main butte, riders can visit the cave interpretive area before or after riding the OHV trail network. The park sits at the edge of the Ouachita National Forest's Oklahoma portion, and trail connections between the state park and the adjacent Forest Service land extend the rideable network. Oklahoma State Parks day-use fee or annual pass applies; Oklahoma OHV registration required. Robbers Cave State Park office (918-465-2565) manages current trail access.