Date of Visit: 20 October 2023
Bull Shoals, AR
72º – the very definition of a perfect day, sunny skies and temperate air
I arrived at Bull Shoals – White River State Park knowing that I would be seeing a large dam, the construction of which on the White River in 1951 created the 45,440-acre Bull Shoals Lake. If I hadn’t just visited the much smaller 10-acre Spring Lake created by a dam on the Spring River at Mammoth Spring, I’m not sure I could have truly taken in the differences. Being the research nerd that I am, I had to investigate further. While the White River’s headwaters are southeast of Fayetteville, they flow north into Missouri before looping east and then dropping back south into Arkansas for the journey southeast toward the Mississippi River. From the headwaters, there are three other dammed lakes (Beaver Lake in Arkansas and Missouri’s Table Rock Lake & Lake Taneycomo) before Bull Shoals. All of these were created in the mid-20th century to control floodwaters and create hydroelectric power. The result of this human intervention is a haven for fishing, boating, and floating, with the White River below the Bull Shoals’ dam being famous for trout fishing. (Again on this trip, I wished I had the means and expertise to haul a boat along with me on my excursions to lake-based parks.)
This park definitely believes in the motto: go big or go home. The 15,744-square-foot visitor center perches above the dam and offers stunning views of both the lake and the river below the dam. The park interpreters and staff provide displays that tell the history of the lake’s creation as well as offering up details about the flora and fauna both in the water and on its shoreline. This map impressed me, as the details of the lake with all of its branches and coves illuminate the topography of the original river channel and its feeders that, once flooded, now offer a changed landscape. The dam is in the lower right corner of the map.
I spent quite a while absorbing all the visitor center had to offer, and then I headed outside to enjoy such a gorgeous day. I started with the easy Heritage & Habitat Trail right outside the visitor center. Partially asphalted, my recovering knee agreed with this easy walk. The first half of the trail tells the story of the building of the dam, and the second half shows how the park is rewilding the land scarred by construction. Following this, I drove down to the Gaston Wildflower Garden Area and Trail. Again, this asphalted walk made my visit with a bum knee pleasant. While I toured the wildflower area in late October and many of the flowering plants had already become dormant, I still found plenty of white and blue asters along with these stunning upright prairie coneflowers. I happen to be a fan of grasses and flowers gone to seed and I got to absorb plenty of these.
Finally, I ended my day at the Lakeside Trail, the easy hike. I would have loved hiking the Big Bluff Trail, but I knew my knee wouldn’t hold up. As its name suggests, the Lakeside Trail takes you along an area of shoreline just up from the dam. It offered me a great photo opportunity to capture the breadth and scope of the dam. The trail also provided plenty of trees to walk among, one of my favorite pastimes. In fact, the trees love me so much that one of them dropped a hickory nut right on my head. On this hike I learned that hollowed out trees are called “den trees,” which makes perfect sense, but I’m not sure I actually knew this before reading an interpretive sign (yes, park staff, I read all the signs, thank you!). The amount of knowledge at my fingertips on these park visits blows my mind every time.
Leaving Bull Shoals – White River, I confess I felt a bit elated. I’d walked for longer periods of time and traversed a rock & dirt trail without any trouble. While my tumble off Mount Nebo delayed my trips to several central Arkansas parks, making my trip to Mountain View and the surrounding parks only a month after the injuries was a huge victory. (Maybe my great day had something to do with wearing my “lucky” red shirt and sunblock trail hat…both of which survived the fall alongside me.)
Up next: Ozark Folk Center
