SEC. DANIELS PRESENTS ARKANSAS PARKS EXHIBIT IN RECOGNITION OF MILESTONE
Friday, Feb 1, 2008
Prehistoric ceramic artifacts featured in Arkansas parks exhibit.
(LITTLE ROCK, AR)—Secretary of State Charlie Daniels today presented the Capitol's Spring 2008 exhibit entitled Arkansas State Parks: Seventy-Five Years of Making Memories in recognition of the Arkansas state parks system’s upcoming 75th birthday.
The exhibit is both a salute to the vision that created the earliest parks and an invitation to visit the 52 parks and museums that comprise today's Arkansas state parks system. Artifacts, including samples of prehistoric ceramics, vintage tourist literature and a Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC)-made rustic ottoman, and vivid photographs interpret the wide variety of parks and their recreation opportunities. A distinctive signpost in the center of the first-floor rotunda points the way to these crown jewels of the Natural State.
In 1933, on Petit Jean Mountain near Morrilton, the CCC began construction at Petit Jean, Arkansas’s first state park. Today, Petit Jean State Park, Mount Nebo State Park, Crowley’s Ridge State Park, Devil’s Den State Park and Lake Catherine State Park endure as legacies to the craftsmanship and conservation achievements of the civilian “Tree Army” of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. The rustic style facilities built by the CCC and, later, the Works Progress Administration (WPA), formed the foundation and inspiration for the parks that followed.
The hallmark of Arkansas’s state park system is its diversity: mountain and lake parks, recreational destinations, places of natural beauty and of historical significance are preserved within the system which welcomed over nine million visitors last year. Among the facilities within the system are over 1,700 campsites and a hundred cabins, four hotel-style lodges, group overnight facilities, restaurants, swimming pools, marinas, two golf courses, hundreds of miles of hiking and multi-use trails, backpacking trails and access to ATV trails, plus museums, two arboretums, horse camps at Devil's Den State Park and Village Creek State Park, an airport (at Petit Jean State Park) that includes a fly-in campground for tent campers, the Crater of Diamonds (an open pit diamond mine open to prospectors) and access to 29 lakes and 12 rivers featuring both warm-water and trout water fishing.
Arkansas State Parks: 75 Years of Making Memories was designed and fabricated by Exhibit Shop Supervisor Dorothy Meeks and Exhibit Specialist Keith Martin of Arkansas State Parks’ Exhibit Shop in collaboration with the Secretary of State's office. The exhibit will remain on view in the Capitol's first-floor display cases through May from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. on weekdays and from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. on weekends and holidays.
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Contact: Natasha Naragon
Phone: (501) 683-1441
Email: natasha.naragon@sos.arkansas.gov
Arkansas Secretary of State Charlie Daniels
256 State Capitol Building
Little Rock, Arkansas 72201
Phone: (501) 682-1010
Website: www.sos.ar.gov
Email: arsos@sos.ar.gov
