The Cookson Hills are a rugged, heavily wooded hill country in eastern Oklahoma between Stilwell, Sallisaw, and Tahlequah. As an extension of Arkansas’s Boston Mountains, they mark the southwestern edge of the Ozark Plateau and connect Oklahoma to the higher uplands farther east. The region is a dissected plateau of ridges and peaks rising to about 1,500 feet, with oak, black walnut, and hickory forests covering steep slopes and narrow valleys carved by streams flowing to the Illinois River. Historically part of the Cherokee Nation until Oklahoma statehood in 1907, the hills are also linked to Charles Arthur “Pretty Boy” Floyd and remain notable for preserved natural lands.