A Big Lake baptism
I stepped down from the elevated duck blind, anxious to get in the boat for a tour of Pulaski County’s Big Lake. Unfortunately, with my left leg in the boat and my right leg still in the blind, the boat moved away from me. I wound up in the water on a cold Saturday morning. Here’s the good news: The water wasn’t deep, and my waders had no leaks. Amazingly, I didn’t have any wet clothes.
The other hunters called it my Big Lake baptism and vowed to name the spot just behind the blind the Rex Hole. I, in turn, explained to them that I was doing in-depth research for a newspaper column and wanted to determine the lake’s depth. I’m sure they’ll embellish the story in the months and years to come at the Big Lake Hunting Club. After all, what’s a hunting club for if not to make memories and turn them into tall tales?
Located just a few miles from the southern border of the state’s largest city, Big Lake is one of this state’s historic and natural treasures. Even though it’s in the state’s most populous county, most people don’t know it’s there. About 1,100 acres are covered in water. There’s some open water, but much of Big Lake is filled with thick stands of cypress and tupelo.
The club has a history that dates back to 1886 when it was incorporated as the Big Lake Club by several of Little Rock’s most prominent citizens. Later documents list it as the Big Lake Hunting Club, the Big Lake Sportsman’s Club and the Big Lake Sportsmen’s Club. Among the familiar last names on the list of founders are Worthen, Kavanaugh, Penick and Geyer. Future Gov. Carl Bailey was an early member of the club.
Big Lake and almost 4,000 surrounding acres now are owned by Arkadelphia banker Ross Whipple, the chairman of Summit Bank. That’s good news since Whipple is among the state’s foremost conservationists. Despite its proximity to Little Rock, there’s virtually no chance the land will be developed under Whipple’s ownership.
The story of how the original Big Lake Club disbanded reads like something out of a Southern Gothic novel. In 1943, someone began putting arsenic in the sugar at the Big Lake clubhouse. It couldn’t be determined who the culprit was and who was the intended victim. No one would talk. So the members decided to disband the club. The problems were exacerbated by the fact that the country’s focus on winning World War II left little time or disposable income for such a club.
Shortly after the end of the war, South Arkansas timber magnate Hugh Ross learned that the land was for sale. Each week, Ross would take a Missouri Pacific train from Arkadelphia to Little Rock for a Wednesday night poker game at downtown Little Rock’s Marion Hotel, an event that attracted many of the state’s top business leaders. Knowing of Ross’ desire to purchase timberland, Little Rock investment banker W.R “Witt” Stephens made him aware of Big Lake’s availability. The sale was completed in 1946.
Hugh Ross’ father-in-law, J.G. Clark, had begun amassing thousands of acres of timberland in Southwest Arkansas in the 1880s. Ross’ daughter Jane became a leading Arkansas philanthropist. Jane Ross died in July 1999, but the Ross Foundation still manages more than 60,000 acres of timberland with the proceeds used for charitable purposes. The Ross family occasionally used the clubhouse for family fishing outings, but it was no longer operated as a club. In 1951, Hugh Ross tore down the original clubhouse and used some of the cypress timber to build a house on Lake Hamilton.
“They would come up here to fish from time to time, but after the house on Lake Hamilton was built, there wasn’t much reason to come to Big Lake,” Whipple says. “The land was more of an investment than a club at that point.”
What Whipple describes as “a group of Cajuns with pirogues” was hired by the Ross family to clear cypress trees from the lake. The valuable timber was processed on the site at a small sawmill. Whipple, who began running the Ross Foundation in the late 1970s, first came to Big Lake more than three decades ago. In 1996, he bought Big Lake from Jane Ross and has been adding acreage ever since. He moved a mobile home onto the property in 1997 to use for occasional duck hunts. In 2004, he built a plush lodge on the site of the original 1886 structure. Several years ago, central Arkansas construction executive David Gatzke approached Whipple with a box filled with records from the early years of the Big Lake Club. Knowing that Gatzke often hunted in the area, a descendant of J.W. Mons (who was once an officer in the club) had given Gatzke the files. Gatzke gave them to Whipple, who had them restored. Many of the photos, maps and letters now line the walls of the lodge, making it as much a museum of Arkansas history as it is a duck club.
Honorary memberships in the Big Lake Club were given to governors, U.S. senators, judges, county officials and others. Whipple has dozens of thank-you letters from those officials. He jokes that the honorary memberships were especially popular during Prohibition. The 1886 articles of incorporation, bylaws and rules are in a bound book, all handwritten in beautiful calligraphy.
It’s hard to imagine that there are many hunting clubs in the country with such a rich history and so many intact records. It’s even harder to imagine that an ecological wonder such as Big Lake sits on Little Rock’s doorstep, hidden in plain sight. My Big Lake baptism was memorable in more ways than one.