Cedar Falls, a familiar feature at Petit Jean State Park, is flowing freely with the abundance of recent rain. (Joe Mosby Photo)

By Joe Mosby

As familiar as Cedar Falls is to us, the Petit Jean State Park feature has a way of making itself known from new angles.

Currently, the falls are roaring full blast as the water tumbles 95 feet to the circular rock basin. Over-abundant rains have drawn visitors to Cedar Falls who haven’t seen them for – “gosh, how long has it been?”

When things are dry, like late summer, Cedar Creek dwindles to just a slight trickle as it goes over the precipice and to the basin below. It is considerably different at present.

Cedar Falls is where Arkansas’ state parks began.

You can take your pick of dates in the history of Arkansas parks. It was 1934 when construction began on Petit Jean State Park under one of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s alphabet programs. But this was 11 years after the Arkansas Legislature passed a bill without a dissenting vote and Gov. Thomas McRae signed into law an act creating Petit Jean State Park. Nothing happened after the ink dried.

And before that, a push to make Petit Jean a national park failed.

The park idea goes back to 1907 when the officers and stockholders of Fort Smith Lumber Co., came to Petit Jean for a look at property owned by the company. Yes, it was beautiful, they agreed, but there was no practical way to get logs down the mountain and to a mill.

“This needs to be a park,” somebody said.

Dr. T.W. Hardison, well familiar with the area, picked up the idea and ran with it. Hardison wrangled a meeting in 1921 with Stephen Mather, director of the National Park Service, and Mather told him Petit Jean was too small to be a national park, that it was best suited for a state park.

A snag developed because Fort Smith Lumber’s stockholders had agreed to donate the company’s Petit Jean land for a national park, not a state park. Some residents of Morrilton, plus a couple from Pine Bluff, stepped forth and donated 80 acres that included Cedar Falls to the state for a park. Later, the Fort Smith Lumber land, which included Seven Hollows, was added.

In 1934, construction of the park was begun by the Civilian Conservation Corps, and the CCC group that worked on Petit Jean was mostly out-of-work veterans of World War I.
Today, a number of Petit Jean State Park features bear names from those beginning days – Hardison Hall, Mather Lodge, Roosevelt Lake.

A trail at the park now bears the name Davies. That would be father, son and grandson, all of whom were involved in major roles with the park. Grandson Richard Davies is the long-tenured director of the Arkansas Parks and Tourism Department which includes Arkansas State Parks.

As the oldest state park, Petit Jean is the most visited as well. It’s the fountain of memories for countless numbers of Arkansans and out-of-state persons who have visited it perhaps once, maybe more than 100 times.

Cedar Falls, for example, draws admirers who once made the two-mile steep, rocky hike down to its base. Today, they take a leisurely stroll down a comfortable boardwalk to an overlook. The steep trail is still there as well, starting at Mather Lodge and descending down steps cut in solid rock by CCC crews three-quarters of a century ago. The trail is rated “moderate to strenuous.”

Petit Jean’s campgrounds often have motor homes costing into the six-figure range as well as $75 tents. The campers come from Morrilton, Conway, Little Rock and sometimes Boston or from points overseas.

Others may opt for a night or two at Mather Lodge or at one of the nearby cabins. Larger numbers of visitors, though, are day-trippers. They come to the park to just relax for an hour or more. They may hike a trail. They could have a picnic lunch.

A repeat visitor may recall an evening at the boathouse, where a jukebox put forth popular tunes, and yellow lights cut down on summer bugs.

Many of these visitors take a peek at Cedar Falls, familiar though less awesome than Niagara but as much a part of Arkansas as the latter is of New York and Ontario.

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Joe Mosby is the retired news editor of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission and Arkansas’ best known outdoor writer. His work is distributed by the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock. He can be reached by e-mail at jhmosby@cyberback.com.