Lake Fort Smith (52 Parks : 52 Poems)

Date of Visit: 28 June 2023

Mountainburg, AR

88º (feels like 95º), bright sun all day, excessive heat warning, nevertheless, she persisted

Park 4 of 52 AR State Parks: 52 Poems was Lake Fort Smith. When I began this project, I worried that visiting so many parks in such a short time would result in the visits all blurring together; however, that hasn’t been the case at all. Each park has such unique features that I find my slew of pictures, pages of squiggly notes, and the ephemera of trail maps and park brochures all serve to bring back the individual details of the experience. The three standout details of Lake Fort Smith State Park are these: 1) Westward Expansion by European-American settlers, 2) the 1930’s WPA, and 3) the Ozark Mountains Ecoregion.

Oh, and one more. It was hot!

No matter the size or shape of the park, my first stop is always the Visitor Center where I talk to staff, read/view all of the display materials, and make sure my water bottle is full. The Visitor Center at LFS has a lot of information on Euro-American settlement, as Fort Smith, AR was considered “the gateway to Oklahoma” for the late 19th century land rush. The display begins with the statement that “Arkansas wasn’t originally on the direct route for pioneers” because of our terrain: mountains to the north, rivers and swamps to the east and south. Therefore, “for a long while, Arkansas was considered terra incognita–a perfect pioneer mystery.” Wow. That phrasing gave me pause. How easily we label something non-white as a “mystery.” For goodness sakes, there were thriving communities of indigenous peoples living within our artificial borders at the time. The display does note, “Early Arkansas inhabitants included the Osage, the Quapaw, and, later, the Cherokee.”

As I read about the materials that were important to survival for homesteaders (some examples: salt, saws, & guns), I struggled to reconcile the brutal facts of our history of the genocide of indigenous peoples, and the exile from their homelands for those who survived. While it was fascinating to contemplate the hard choices of resource management (I am an obsessed Stardew Valley player after all), there was a bitter grief underlying my admiration for the tenacity of those people who made the journey. As I begin working on the poem drafts for most of these parks, I continue to circle the question of what I owe to the people who came before me in these preserved places.

Another complicated history at LFS is the human stewardship of natural resources. I learned that Lake Fort Smith was first created in the early 1930s by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) to provide clean drinking water to the growing community of Fort Smith. This was done by damming Frog Bayou, and my one regret of my visit was that the heat prevented me from hiking down to the bayou and the dam. As with my visits to parks with large Civilian Conservation Corp footprints, I appreciated the education provided by park staff at LFS. As Lake Fort Smith serves as the water source for Fort Smith and surrounding towns, it is a highly protected lake. Here, I wondered about human influence on the environment. My always present concerns about global population growth and climate change destruction simmered beneath my admiration for the technology and human willpower at play in managing water resources. This has already begun to show up in my drafting for this park.

For the hikers out there, LFS is known as the launching point for the 175-mile Ozark Highland Trail that leads east and then northward into Missouri. Later in the day, I attended a trail talk on the first bit of the OHT; however, I found hiking the shorter Warren Hollow Trail to be more manageable for my day visit. This trail took me through the standard Ozark woodlands of flowering dogwoods, hickories, all the oaks, sweet gum, and various maples. I saw several deer, and no matter how many times I see them in all of these various parks, I’m still awed by their beauty.

At the trail talk, an amazing park interpreter got into the geology with me and I was thrilled. I learned that the Ozark Mountains are not technically mountains at all, but erosion created plateaus. In scientific terms, mountains are created by plate tectonics or by volcanos. As neither occurred in the Ozarks, they are misnamed. This took me back to the question that came up at Pinnacle Mountain State Park: who gets to decide what a mountain is? This, too, circles the issue of human stewardship of our natural environment. What does it mean to name, both the animate and the inanimate? What relationship does that naming create?

It was a hot day, but an enjoyable one that gave me plenty of material to play with on the page. Next up: Devil’s Den State Park.