Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Arkansas once envisioned as home for Ouachita National Park
My friend and fellow historian Harold Coogan of Mena recently sent me a nicely printed portfolio from 1928 promoting a proposed Ouachita National Park. With the avid support of boosters from Mena, Fort Smith and elsewhere, federal legislation was proposed which would have created a national park stretching through the central Ouachita Mountains of Polk and Montgomery counties.
While the proposal ultimately passed in Congress, supporters were devastated when President Calvin Coolidge, at the last moment of his presidency, vetoed the legislation.
In 1928, the national parks system was concentrated in the West. Only Lafayette National Park in Maine (later changed to Acadia), was located east of the Mississippi River. Many Arkansans mistakenly believe that Hot Springs National Park dates to 1832, when the area was designated a national “reservation.” National park status was not granted until 1921.
Primary organizers of the Ouachita National Park proposal were Mena businessmen, including V.W. St. John, publisher of the Mena Star newspaper. A large number of Fort Smith businessmen also joined the undertaking early on.
To broaden the effort, the statewide Ouachita National Park Foundation Society was founded. Among the leaders who joined the society board were former Gov. Thomas C. McRae, chosen president; U.S. Sen. Thaddeus H. Caraway of Jonesboro; Harvey Couch, president of Arkansas Power & Light Co.; and W.C. Ribenack, president of the Little Rock Chamber of Commerce. State Rep. Osro Cobb of Montgomery County, a rare Republican legislator, added some bipartisan support for the proposed park.
William R. Kavanaugh, a leader in both the Southwestern State Park Association and the Oklahoma Good Roads Association, was hired as executive director of the society and opened an office in Fort Smith.
The original plan was for a Mena National Park, focusing on the scenic lands around Rich Mountain and including what is today Queen Wilhelmina State Park. The proposed location was later moved south and east of Mena and increased in size, an area still largely in the public domain at that time.
Joe David Rice, former director of tourism for the state and a longtime student of Arkansas, described the proposed park in a 1988 article in Arkansas Times magazine: “With its 163,000 acres, the Ouachita National Park would have been big, roughly three times as large as today’s entire Arkansas state park system. It would have been 45 times the size of Petit Jean State Park …”
The easiest way to visualize the proposal, Rice wrote, was in miles: “It would have been up to 35 miles long and 12 miles wide.” Beginning on the east in southwestern Montgomery County, the proposed park would have stretched westward, taking thin slices of Pike and Howard counties and terminating with a large chunk of Polk County.
Park promoters stressed the scenic beauty of the lands. One Fort Smith man described the wide variety of vistas found in the proposed park: “… steep, timber-covered peaks rising to 2,500 feet, long ridges of mountains, with peaks separated only by narrow green valleys; streams of pure, cold, spring water in abundance …”
Recognizing that the existing western national parks offered truly startling scenery, park promoters sometimes came up with unusual commentary on the scenic wonders. Congressman Otis T. Wingo of DeQueen, lead sponsor of the national park legislation, took a folksy if not sexist approach: “Why, parks [and] beauty are just like women — they are of different types; no two of them exactly alike, but they are all beautiful. This may not be a Rocky Mountain brunette, but it is a Mississippi Valley blonde.”
A brochure included a comprehensive list of waterways small and large: “Originating and flowing out of this proposed park area to the north are Carter, Board Camp, Macks, Butcher Knife and Big Fork creeks, these being feeders of the Ouachita River. To the eastward flow the Caddo River to Polk Creek; to the south the Little Missouri River, fed in the upper stretches by Crooked, Long, Brier and Blaylock creeks; the Saline River, fed by many small streams; and the Cossatot River, fed by Mine, Sugar, Short, Caney and Brushy creeks, while to the west flow Two Mile and Six Mile creeks, the latter emptying into Mountain Fork of Little River — certainly a remarkable water system for an area of such size.”
On Dec. 5, 1927, Congressman Wingo introduced legislation in the House of Representatives to create the Ouachita National Park, with a similar
bill being introduced in the Senate by Sen. Joe T. Robinson.
Prospects for passage looked good. The support of Sen. Robinson, who was minority leader of the U.S. Senate and within a few months would be the Democratic nominee for vice president of the United States, meant much. Both U.S. senators from Oklahoma endorsed the legislation. Sen. Morris Sheppard of Texarkana, Texas, was another eager supporter.
Most of the political opposition came from the western states, home to almost all the national parks. However, as Jane J. Lynn has written in a thorough 1996 article in the Arkansas Historical Quarterly, “most opponents were high-ranking federal officials who apparently shared negative, preconceived ideas concerning the proposal.”
Perhaps the most powerful opponent was Stephen T. Mather, founding director of the National Park Service, who also happened to be serving as chairman of the National Conference on State Parks, which opposed the bill. The U.S. Forest Service also criticized the proposal since it would take land from the Ouachita National Forest.
Most of the opposition acknowledged that the Ouachita Mountains offered many scenic and recreational opportunities, but the proposal did not meet the high standards required of a national park: “… the most remarkable and superlative scenery in the country or other unique features so extraordinary as to possess national interest of the highest order,” as one National Park Service administrator wrote Mather.
Sen. Robinson pushed the bill through the Senate without a single dissenting vote. Congressman Wingo faced a different situation in the House. Several western representatives spoke against the bill, and various opponents from within the federal bureaucracy lobbied against it.
In the end, the House passed the bill by a vote of 164 to 71 on Feb. 27, 1928 — only a few days before President Coolidge would be surrendering the presidency to Herbert Hoover.
Both sides lobbied Coolidge on the bill. On the morning of his last day in office, Coolidge signed several bills — but he “pocket-vetoed” the park bill by refusing to sign.