New Jacksonport center imbued with history

JACKSONPORT — Looking as sleek as a spaceship freshly arrived from some stylish solar system, the new Visitor Center at Jacksonport State Park dazzles in sharp contrast to its time-worn 19th-century surroundings.

Designed as a 21st-century spin on the traditional dogtrot house, with a breezeway flanked by exhibit galleries, the $4.1-million structure stands on a levee overlooking the White River and the former Jackson County Courthouse.

The imposing brick courthouse was completed in 1872, in a variant of Second Empire style, for what was then a princely sum of $40,412. Open six days a week, it still houses historical exhibits in five ground-floor galleries. They remain worth a visit, as does the upstairs courtroom with its aura of legal drama from the decades just after the Civil War.

But the Visitor Center, open daily since March with exhibits that deploy some bells and whistles of digital legerdemain, is now the star of the show at Jacksonport. The project was financed, like other recent improvements in state parks, through the oneeighth of 1% conservation sales tax that voters approved in 1996.

Polk Stanley Wilcox, designer of the 12,000-squarefoot center, describes the structure in Architect magazine as “our ‘Miesian dogtrot’ [an allusion to renowned modernist Mies van der Rohe].” The Little Rock-based firm calls it “a platform to see and experience the past, and more importantly to understand the value of our state’s history.”

The architects link the design to the Civil War, which saw the town’s occupation by Confederate and Union forces, due to its strategic river location. The two glass cubes divided by the breezeway represent “the divided North and South under one roof … a symbol of reunification.” The entrance plaza’s grove of six trees stands for “almost 6,000 Arkansans whose war ended in this place.”

Such lofty imagery aside, the visitor center’s liveliest pleasures lie in the personal touches of exhibits, which put a human face on Jacksonport’s rather brief span of prosperity. Population peaked around 700 in the 1870s, before railroads bypassed the town and the number of residents declined to the present 200 or so.

The new visitor center at Jacksonport State Park, six miles northwest of Newport off Arkansas 69, is open 8 a.m.-5 p.m. daily. For details, visit ArkansasStateParks. com or call (870) 523-2143.