Highway 263 begins in the
Lower Boston Mountains, a subset of the
Ozark Mountains ecoregion, and winds north to the
Dissected Springfield Plateau-Elk River Hills within the
Ozark Highlands. The highway begins at
Highway 92 approximately northeast of
Greers Ferry, a small city on
Greers Ferry Lake in northern
Cleburne County. Highway 263 runs north, crossing the Devil's Fork of the
Little Red River and passing through the sparsely populated wooded hills of the Boston Mountains. The highway passes through the
National Register of Historic Places-listed
Woodrow Store in the
unincorporated community of
Woodrow before intersecting
Highway 225 in
Prim. Continuing north into
Stone County, the highway winds west through forested hills along the northern edge of the
Cherokee Wildlife Management Area (WMA) and the community of
Parma before forming a
concurrency with
Highway 9 through
Rushing. West of this overlap, Highway 263 turns northward, continuing through rural areas and small communities
Fox and
Mozart toward a concurrency with
Highway 66 at
Timbo. Turning north from Timbo, Highway 263 continues through sparsely populated rural areas. Beginning at
Onia, the highway serves as the southwestern limits of the
Sylamore WMA, while also passing another segment of the Cherokee WMA on the highway's western side. The highway enters the southern corner of
Baxter County, terminating at
Highway 14 in the small town of
Big Flat. The ARDOT maintains Highway 263 like all other parts of the state highway system. As a part of these responsibilities, the department tracks the volume of traffic using its roads in surveys using a metric called average annual daily traffic (AADT). ARDOT estimates the traffic level for a segment of roadway for any average day of the year in these surveys. As of 2017, the peak AADT on the highway (excluding concurrencies) was 710 vehicles per day (VPD) north of Timbo. All remaining segments were below 700 VPD, dropping below 400 VPD in some segments. For reference, the
American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), classifies roads with fewer than 400 vehicles per day as a very low volume local road. No segment of Highway 263 has been listed as part of the
National Highway System, ==History==