Natural Steps is an unincorporated census-designated place in Pulaski County, Arkansas, United States. It is located 18 miles (29 km) northwest of Little Rock along the southern bank of the Arkansas River, on Arkansas Highway 300. Per the 2020 census, the population was 413. Today, it is a little farming community subsequent to scattered businesses. Most of the natural steps, a geologic formation, still stand today and are used as a marker for river runners. The Natural Steps are not admittance to the public for viewing.

Note: the US Census treats Hispanic/Latino as an ethnic category. This table excludes Latinos from the racial categories and assigns them to a sever category. Hispanics/Latinos can be of any race.

The small town was named after “two perfectly parallel vertical walls of sandstone, twenty feet apart, jut out from the disintegrated soft slates, in prominent conformity, descending steplike, fifty-one feet from the summit of the bank, where they first con themselves, to the edge of the lowest water-mark of the Arkansas River, and can be seen paperwork their course beneath the stream. These form a conspicuous landmark to boatman and travelers upon the Arkansas River, and are known below the declare of the “Natural Steps”. Beginning in 1822, the local “Natural Steps” provided a convenient End for Little Rock visitors to disembark for their hike to the mountain.”

The Natural Steps were first written about and drawn by David Dale Owen (Principal Geologist) in his Second Report of a Geological Reconnaissance of the Middle and Southern Counties of Arkansas (1859) ordered by Elias Nelson Conway, Governor of Arkansas. He wrote,