Entries - Entry Category: State Parks - Starting with M

Mammoth Spring State Park preserves the state’s largest natural spring—and one of the largest in the world. Approximately nine million gallons of water flow through the spring hourly. The spectacular stream of cold water is the chief source of the Spring River, a fishing and canoeing stream that is popular year-round because of its dependable flow. The park also preserves a fully restored nineteenth-century railroad depot. Native Americans, particularly the Osage, inhabited the Mammoth Spring area for thousands of years prior to the arrival of Europeans; unfortunately there are few archaeological sites in the area. Recorded local history dates to the early 1800s, when settlers called the spring “Head of the River.” In 1850, geologist David Dale Owen examined the spring …

Location: Cleveland County Size: 6.2 acres Marks’ Mills Battleground State Park, in Cleveland County on the old Camden-Pine Bluff Road, commemorates a Civil War action that was part of the Camden Expedition of General Frederick Steele. The park contains interpretive exhibits and a picnic area. The park is named for John H. Marks, who in 1834 constructed a sawmill and flour mill at this location. The mills were still operating during the Civil War, making them landmarks for both Union and Confederate troops. In March 1864, General Steele led approximately 14,000 soldiers out of Little Rock (Pulaski County) to join in the Union army’s Red River Campaign. The goal of this campaign was to join General Nathaniel Banks’s troops in …

Located just outside of Ashdown (Little River County) in southwest Arkansas, Millwood State Park is known for its excellent fishing and wildlife habitats. It was established about a decade after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built 29,500-acre Millwood Lake north of Texarkana (Miller County). Held in place by a 3.3-mile-long earthen dam—the longest of its type in Arkansas—the lake’s trademark timber stands have made it a bass-fishing haven by providing cover vegetation and a food source that keep the fish in shallow, more accessible water. The lake was built in 1966 on the Little River, some sixteen miles above its confluence with the Red River. In addition to the Little River, the Cossatot and Saline rivers also contribute to …

Moro Bay State Park is one of the most popular locations for fishing and water sports in south central Arkansas. Located at the convergence of Raymond Lake, Moro Bay, and the Ouachita River, the park also marks the junction of Bradley, Calhoun, and Union counties. Records from November 18, 1804, of the Hunter-Dunbar Expedition up the Ouachita River described “Bay Morau” as “a large inlet on the right, which swells into a considerable lake during an inundation.” Before railroads, the Ouachita River was the primary means of travel in the region, and many cotton barges used it to make their way from south Arkansas to New Orleans. In days past, the only way to get across the river was by ferry. …

Mount Magazine State Park is located on the highest peak in Arkansas, Mount Magazine, which is a plateau rising out of the Arkansas River Valley to an elevation of 2,753 feet above sea level. The steepness of the elevation change, roughly 2,200 feet between its summit and the surrounding valleys, produces dramatic views that attract tourists. Native Americans did not live on the mountain year-round, instead settling at lower elevations near the Arkansas and Petit Jean rivers. However, six sites dating to the Archaic period, from 9,500 to 650 BC, have been recorded on Mount Magazine. Near the top of the mountain, in a bluff shelter, artifacts from the Woodland and Mississippian cultural periods have been found, consisting mostly of …

Mount Nebo State Park, Arkansas’s second oldest state park, encompasses more than 3,000 acres on Mount Nebo, a flat-topped mesa that rises to a high point of 1,762 feet above the Arkansas River valley of west-central Arkansas, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Roughly 100 acres of the park are on the tabletop portion of the mountain, the main destination of tourists visiting the area. Called Magazine by the French because of its resemblance to a barn (but not to be confused with nearby present-day Mount Magazine), the peak was a prominent landmark for early navigation on the Arkansas River and was renamed Nebo sometime after the Civil War. Louis C. White of Dardanelle (Yell County) owned land around the …