MAMMOTH SPRING - An active imagination is a traveler’s good friend in a place like Mammoth Spring. It’s a destination much diminished from its halcyon days a century ago. Its tranquility can enhance its idyllic charm.
The site, now encompassing Mammoth Spring State Park, is tucked smack against the Arkansas-Missouri state line. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it was a bustling destination for vacationers from Little Rock, Memphis, St. Louis and other regional locales.
Most tourists came by train, getting off at the restored brick depot that now houses a nostalgia-stirring museum of railroad memorabilia. They showed up mainly to enjoy the lake formed by Arkansas’ largest spring, which discharges nearly 10 million gallons of 58-degree fresh water per hour.The spring is the source of the Spring River, which flows south into the Black River.
At the end of the 19th century, Mammoth Spring boasted two newspapers and a population of about 1,000. There were two substantial hotels, as well as a variety of cabins for rent. The town’s listed population is now 977, and the one lodging is the Riverview Motel, which caters mainly to visitors canoeing or kayaking on the river.
The liveliest feature of the museum in the old Frisco Railroad depot, dating to 1886, is a display of a dozen life-size mannequins depicting a train crew, station staff and passengers from a century ago. The depot’s two separate waiting rooms serve as reminder of the racial segregation that prevailed in Arkansas until the civil-rights era.
The museum is among 15 stops mapped out in the park’s brochure for Spring Lake Trail, which loops that 10-acre body of water in six-tenths of a mile. You won’t see the spring. As a sign explains, the spring’s outflow is hidden in a stone crevasse more than 80 feet below the lake’s surface.
Just south of the visitor center, the trail crosses the dam that was built in 1888. The walkway atop the dam provides a fine view of the spring water pouring down to form the river. At the south end of the walkway stands a hydroelectric plant that provided the area’s power from 1925 to 1972. Gizmo junkies can check out the generator and interior mechanisms.
A little farther on were the grist mills successively built in 1836, 1850 and 1880. The second mill was burned by Union troops during the Civil War. Nearby stands a large tree that resembles a catalpa. It is actually a royal paulownia, a species native to China. Known here as the princess or empress tree, it bears tubular flowers of vivid violet in the spring.
Heading east to the old depot, hikers are reminded to stay off the railroad tracks, still used by freight trains. After touring the depot, they can head north, admiring the ducks and geese that frequent the lake, while keeping an eye out for the occasional swimming mammal - not a beaver, as some people think, but the smaller muskrat.
Hikers perusing the trail’s various signs will pick up one surprising bit of information that links Mammoth Spring to the famed Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tenn.
As the tale is told, a Memphis newspaper reporter named George D. Hay was visiting Mammoth Spring in the early 1920s when he took in a hoedown that lasted until 5 a.m. at a local cabin.
Impressed by the energy and old-time tunes, Hay is said to have gone on the radio in Nashville one evening in 1925 as “the Solemn Old Judge,” presenting an 80-year-old fiddler on the premiere of Barn Dance, later renamed Grand Ole Opry.The visitor center at Mammoth Spring State Park, off U.S.
63 some 160 miles north of Little Rock, is open 8 a.m.-5 p.m. daily.
The train-station museum is open 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday, 1-5 p.m. Sunday. Admission is free.
Call (870) 625-7364 or visit ArkansasStateParks.com.
The Mammoth Spring National Fish Hatchery just south of the state park, has recently expanded its aquarium and other visitor facilities. Call (870) 625-3912 or visit mammothspring.fws.gov.
Style, Pages 30 on 04/22/2014