Lake Fort Smith State Park

Through the lens of Ozark motoring, the city of Fort Smith, Arkansas, doesn't figure prominently. It's certainly an exciting melting pot of vehicular control, a cornucopia of driving techniques imported from the nations where its residents learned to drive. Still, its latitude South of our beloved green steeps puts its at a geographic disadvantage in discussions of things Ozarkian. That is, unless you count Lake Fort Smith State Park.

[Lake Fort Smith official site]


As a window on the Western United States, Arkansas was a settler's stumbling block. The Ozark Mountains were difficult to traverse, while the Arkansas River was swampy and perilous.

Fort Smith lies at the foot of Ozark Mountains in the Arkansas River Valley. Once a military outpost at the edge of the Indian Territory (now "Oklahoma" in politically correct quarters), it is one of the oldest and most historically significant places in Arkansas. The fort guarded the Trail of Tears and the Old Wire Road, and during lax times when the military wasn't looking, it became a haven for border-hopping scofflaws and nogoodniks. Thanks to the efforts of District Judge Issac "Justice Beard" Parker, the U.S. government hanged more individuals at Fort Smith than anywhere else in America. Happening place.


Great place for a sit, if you're into that.

Working the gallows built a mighty, mighty thirst, and by the 1930s Fort Smith was seeking a dependable municipal water supply. The Arkansas River, sixth largest in America and inches away from downtown, was eyed as the most likely source. However, the Depression-era federal government faced a frustrating surplus of idle socialists, and intervened with a plan to funnel crisp Ozark lake water from a remote point North in the Boston Mountains instead. By 1936, the Works Progress Administration had tapped scores of underemployed laborers to dam Frog Bayou near Mountainburg and return an ambitious 30-mile run of pipeline through the rugged hills.


Bucolic splendor at Lake Fort Smith.

The resulting Lake Fort Smith became not only a functional asset to its namesake, but a scenic wellspring of recreation for all of the Ozarks.

Lake Fort Smith is located a short drive East of Scenic Highway 71 roughly halfway between Fayetteville and Fort Smith. Given the scraggly terrain in this part of the Ozarks, it's surprising that there's enough level land to hold pavilions, campsites, a playground, a marina, and other delights for the outdoor-minded. It's all packed in there, along with some brand-spanking-new group lodging. Should you ever decide to promote synergy with your creepy extended family or abrasive co-workers, this seems like a pretty nice spot.


The animal friends of the Ozarks are represented well at the Visitor Center.

The park's role in Fort Smith history assumes a unique blend of Wild West and rich upland biology. The Visitor Center hosts exhibits ranging from frontier settlement to a hands-on wildlife. Yep, turtle-petting. Get you some of that.


Hiking to the extreme: the massive Ozark Highlands Trail begins at the Lake Fort Smith Visitor Center.

Interestingly, Lake Fort Smith was expanded a couple of years ago with the construction of a much larger dam. Lake Shepherd Springs just upstream was combined with the new, larger lake, and its dam was incorporated into the site of the new park. The Voltron of state parks? The original WPA constructions stood to be flooded or relocated, so they were dismantled. Still, some stones were reused in slick new facilities opened in 2008, so the current park carries on the legacy begun during the Great Depression.

Lake Fort Smith is quietly tucked away in folds of the Ozarks, but it's worth a detour.

When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.
- John Muir

Pea Ridge National Military Park

Memorial Day commemorates America's young, but undaunted history of armed involvement on the international scene. We most commonly recall trench scenes in Europe and island clashes in the Pacific, but some of the most brutish fighting seen by Americans happened right here in the Ozarks along the Old Wire Road.



The Battle of Pea Ridge was a crucial step the American Civil War, and a milestone event in local history. During the war, control of the Ozarks between Springfield and the Arkansas border became essential to securing the pivotal state of Missouri and key to commanding the destiny of the Western United States. The North and the South each had designs on ultimately ruling Missouri, the only state above the Mason-Dixon Line the that allowed slavery. Their armies forced the issue during the icy Winter of 1862.

[Battle of Pea Ridge at Wikipedia]


The Pea Ridge visitor's center was recently expanded with new videos and displays. The tour road makes a stop at the hill overlooking the main battlefield.

Tens of thousands of soldiers met at what is now Pea Ridge National Military Park in far Northwest Arkansas, a few miles South of the Missouri border. The area's mixture of brushy woods, spiked ridges, and open pasture are maintained in the same state as found in the middle of the 19th century, and visitors can explore the park by car, foot, bike, or even horseback. As mentioned before, one of earliest and best-preserved segments of the Butterfield Overland Route - the original Ozarkbahn - lies within park boundaries.


Hiking trails criss-cross the park. Little Mountain, which hid Confederate troop movements, can be seen in the distance from the Elkhorn Ridge overlook.

[Pea Ridge National Military Park at U.S. National Park Service]

While the setting is serene, the action in March 1862 was hard-fought and grim. United States General Samuel Curtis had chased Confederate forces back into Arkansas until supply lines ran thin. Expecting an imminent counterattack up the Old Wire Road, an outnumbered Union Army dug into the high ground along Sugar Creek, just South of Pea Ridge. Southern General Earl Van Dorn sensed an opportunity to cut Curtis off entirely, and used the cover of darkness and nearby hills to secret his forces around to the Union's rear flank.


The Union fortifications along the Old Wire Road at Little Sugar Creek never saw battle, but the soldiers entrenched there had to perform a hasty about-face to meet the Confederate forces.

The result was a series of fierce, confused melees in close quarters and frigid conditions. The Rebels emerged from the woods to capture Elkhorn Tavern, an advantageous point along the Old Wire Road, but failed to capitalize on their position. They were ultimately repulsed the following day in one of the Civil War's largest confrontations West of the Mississippi.



[Battle of Pea Ridge at the Encyclopedia of Arkansas]

The Union Army had pushed the Confederates out of Missouri for good, but the Battle of Pea Ridge was costly. There were over 3,000 casualties combined, and the developing economy of Northwest Arkansas was savaged. The Confederacy burned any infrastructure of civilization deemed beneficial to the enemy, including War Eagle Mill, most of Fayetteville, and the Van Winkle sawmill operation that formed the basis for Hobbs State Conservation Area. A significant depopulation followed, and the lay of contemporary Northwest Arkansas would have to rise from that ruin.


Elkhorn Tavern and the now-defunct hamlet of Leetown were used to treat the masses of injuries.

Pea Ridge National Military Park is fateful ground. What if the risky Confederate assault at Pea Ridge had been successful? What if the Union's campaign against the South had followed a different path through the Ozarks? Would have the businesses and fortunes of today's biggest economic drivers locally - WalMart, Tyson, J.B. Hunt, the University of Arkansas, and so on - taken root without the heavy hand of war?


Years after the battle, veterans from both sides gathered at Elkhorn Tavern. Pea Ridge would not gain National Park status until the Eisenhower era.

No matter what, war extracts a grizzly toll, especially when it destroys from within. The well-tended beauty of Pea Ridge is a striking memorial to soldiers who took part in a chapter of conflict where every victory was an exercise in American self-defeat, but bravery was on high form.

Fayetteville Parks and Recreation

Over the centuries, the Old Wire Road through the Ozarks has become a mosaic of quiet dirt roads, city streets, and modern highways that can still be walked or driven. However, one section now sleeps with the fishes. Lake Fayetteville hides the original road at a point just South of the last town featured, Springdale, Arkansas. The lake was flooded in 1949 as a municipal water supply, only to be dwarfed less than twenty years later by the creation of the much more voluminous Beaver Lake for nearby water needs. For decades, Lake Fayetteville was like Rogers' Lake Atalanta in that there was little traffic beyond biology class field trips and fishing. Luckily, a recent surge of attention is changing that.



[City of Fayetteville: Lake Fayetteville Park]

We have already read how Heritage Trail Partners, Inc., is looking to make the historic Old Wire Road a local attraction by establishing it as the main artery for a regional network of walking and cycling trails. No one in the area has embraced the concept more thoroughly than Fayetteville, which already has a broad paved highway grid for people-powered travel. One of the most popular portions of the trail network is the freshly minted five-mile loop around Lake Fayetteville, currently open and nearing full pavement completion as of this writing. The city even recognizes the historical value of the Butterfield Overland Route that made the most notorious use of the Old Wire Road.

[Fayetteville Flyer: Butterfield Trail Wayside Plaza dedicated]



The trail harbors its share of bucolic wooded scenes, but it also features a rather neat human-made view where it crosses the lake's spillway. Given the bridge's isolation from any roadside viewing, the gesture to style over a simpler lowest-bidder solution is uncommon and appreciated.



The most impressive sight on the Lake Fayetteville trail is the Botanical Garden of the Ozarks, occupying city lands on the lake's Eastern shore. The Garden is a non-profit, volunteer-driven showcase of floral creativity that officially opened for public enjoyment in 2006, and continues to plot expansion. It has a novel division of greenery into themed areas with artful installations, including a Japanese Garden, Children's Garden, and Ozark Native plants installation. Concerts, farmers' markets, and trail access points bolster the attraction.



* The local recreational opportunities are excellent, but this entry comes stamped with an asterisk. Every post to date has been a call to drive, see, and enjoy the fruits of motoring. An unfortunate reality is that Fayetteville, seat of the University of Arkansas and my home town, does not lend itself to an especially convincing study of the romantic roadside Americana. Some parts of Fayetteville are an Ozarkbahn antithesis, spurning cars and the freewheeling spirit of travel with a labyrinth of often steep, narrow streets choked with speed tables and restrictive parking ordinances. The terrain-driven street discontinuity and college-town eco-idealism express a minor, but surly intolerance for the automobile, the essential tool for Ozark pathfinders. Quite a few locals would recommend you abandon internal combustion and strictly operate by bicycle.



Why should this bother us? America's love of road-going mobility and roadside attractions, once strong at mid-20th-century, has dwindled into begrudgingly accepting cars as a means to an end. Now that cars are widely regarded as burdensome pollutant-coughing appliances, rather than lusty accessories to life's journey, the joy of travel and everything along the way is dying, as well.



Still, Fayetteville has a laudable insistence for ever-expanding public recreation, such as park space, art walks, and concerts. In grasping for communal sensibilities, the town seems more inclined to grow deliberately in order to minimize creeping suburban anonymity. Fayetteville is not a flavor that always suits the pallet of driving enthusiasts, but it is a unique one. Possession of personality in itself warrants an Ozarkbahn honorable mention, for it motivates us as roving enthusiasts to seek new and different experiences. Lake Fayetteville, for example. If you happen to enjoy greenways as much as byways, Fayetteville does it the best in the Ozarks.