Whitewater park awaits opening
SILOAM SPRINGS — The WOKA Whitewater Park is expected to open this summer, but a date hasn’t been set.
The 30-acre whitewater park on the Oklahoma-Arkansas border will host kayaking, surfing, stand-up paddle boarding, tubing and rafting, officials announced. The park is on the old Lake Frances spillway on the upper Illinois River in Oklahoma.
The Grand River Dam Authority in Oklahoma and Siloam Springs announced plans for the park in October 2020. The dam authority will oversee and manage the park. WOKA is a combination of the words water, Oklahoma and Arkansas.
An update on the waterpark was given at the Grand River Dam Authority meeting in Chouteau, Okla., on June 14. A slide shown at the meeting said, “The final tuning of the WOKA course is under way and this continues to be an active construction site, it remains closed to the public.”
The WOKA website states: “A swell time starts in 2023.”
“We are still working toward a late summer opening, but until course engineers are closer to completing tuning, we do not have an opening date to release to the public,” Jared Skaggs, director of outdoor experience for the Grand River Dam Authority, said Wednesday.
The park is on Twin Falls Road just off U.S. 59. A new paved trailhead is in place at the main gate.
A ribbon-cutting ceremony for the grand opening of the new 3-mile WOKA Trail will be held at 9:30 a.m. Friday . The paved trail will connect Siloam Springs to the whitewater park near Watts, Okla., according to a Siloam Springs news release.
The event will be held at the trailhead just south of the Siloam Springs water plant at 2600 S. Carl St.
The Illinois River park is expected to host 85,000 visitors annually, according to the 2020 news release. The park is on the north bank of the river.
The Walton Family Foundation is paying 95% of the park’s $33 million construction cost, according to the release. The foundation also provided money for the park’s design.
The park’s main attraction will be an about 1,200-footlong, 100-foot-wide side channel off the river with eight drop-features to provide wave action for kayakers, surfers and tubers of all skill levels, according to the release.
About 60,000 cubic yards of rock were blasted out to form the channel, Derek Salmonson, project manager for Crossland Construction, said in June 2021 when the media were given a tour of the site.
Additional amenities will include waterfront, shaded spectator seating; rental services; parking; trails; public restrooms; and course put-in and take-outs.
Siloam Springs operates a waterpark 8 miles upstream on Fisher Ford Road, which served as the inspiration for WOKA, according to the October 2020 news release.
Material repurposed from the whitewater course construction will be used to create a stair-step dam that will mitigate hydraulic conditions and dangerous currents, according to the release.
In October, the Northwest Arkansas Land Trust announced it bought about 830 acres of the Lake Frances property near Siloam Springs, according to a news release. The trust will manage the property, now known as the Lake Frances Preserve, for wildlife habitat, water quality and future public access.
The preserve lies on the Arkansas-Oklahoma border east of the Illinois River and the 70-acre Lake Frances. The acquisition was made possible through a grant from the Walton Family Foundation, the release stated.
Land trust spokesman Ryder Snell said the cost was about $3 million.
Lake Frances Preserve has over 7 miles of mapped streams, much of which consists of seasonal and ephemeral streams, which support an abundance of plants and wildlife. Permanent protection of the streams and habitats will help protect water quality in the Illinois River, according to the release.
Public access plans include site-appropriate hiking trails, natural surface multiuse trails and a hard-surface multiuse trail connecting U.S. 59 in Oklahoma north of WOKA Whitewater Park to Arkansas 59.