Gradually but significantly, the heyday of U.S. Arkansas Corps of Engineers park facilities in Arkansas is changing.
The latest development in the news is the Corps' handing over, on a 25-year, no money lease, of Cadron Settlement Park to the city of Conway. The park was one of many dozens developed by the Corps in conjunction with the McClellan-Kerr Navigation Project on the Arkansas River in the late 1960s and the 1970s.
These parks varied widely. Some were close to plus with paved roads, electricity and water for campers and pavilions for group gatherings. Nearly all had boat launching ramps. Others were more modest in accommodations for recreational users.
A constant was that the public liked 'em. The public loved some of 'em. But all of the parks cost more money to maintain and operate than was brought in through modest fees charged for camping and, later, for launching boats.
As strings on the money bags of the Corps gradually tightened, seemingly with each session of Congress, the parks were squeezed. Maintenance such as mowing grass suffered, then the parks started closing here and there. The Corps sent feelers to Arkansas entities, especially Arkansas State parks. But the latter couldn't handle any additional facilities until 1997, when Amendment 75, the state conservation sales tax, went into effect. A backlog of renovations and already planned projects like Mount Magazine State Park has occupied the state park system since 1997.
A few of the Corps parks along the Arkansas River were taken over by cities and counties. An example just down the river from Cadron Settlement is Palarm Park, a small facility with a boat ramp, restrooms and picnic tables. The town of Mayflower maintains it as a park although it is a few miles away from Mayflower.
With Cadron Settlement Park, there is controversy despite its location on a history-rich site. Several years of unsavory sexual activities drove away family visitors and resulted in a series of "sting" operations by undercover Faulkner County sheriff's deputies. The Corps closed much of the park.
Cadron was one of the earliest settlements in central Arkansas, along with one at La Petite Roche, the French original name for Little Rock. Already a trading locale, Cadron was virtually at the geographical center of Arkansas and missed out being the capital by one vote in the territorial legislature when the decision was made to move the capital from Arkansas Post in 1820. A deal to make Little Rock the territorial capital and Cadron the seat of Pulaski County was scuttled by political maneuverings that also put the county seat at Little Rock. Cadron then faded and was not in existence when the Civil War broke out in 1861.
Generations of Conway area residents knew the site as Cedar Park. It was privately owned but had little in the way of facilities. In 1937, the land was owned by J.D. Dunaway, and Cedar Park was the site of the annual gathering of the Conway newspaper, the Log Cabin Democrat, and its extensive stable of correspondents. More than a hundred people attended that event.
Fishermen who work the lower Arkansas River grumble about the Corps' closing of Moore's Bayou Park in the Gillett and Dumas area.
After county leaders declined to take over the Moore's Bayou facility, private groups and volunteers tried but with little success.
It is just across the bayou from Arkansas Post, now a National Park System operation, and a short distance from the main Arkansas River.
(Log Cabin outdoor writer Joe Mosby can be contacted by e-mail at jhmosby@cyberback.com.)
