Jasper on the hunt for large elk statue

City hopes it can be tourism spark

The city of Jasper is looking for a life-sized elk statue.

Mayor Jan Larson said the town wants to promote its status as the Elk Capital of Arkansas.

A large elk statue in a visible location would give tourists a reason to stop downtown to take photos, Larson said. While there, they might want to have lunch or go to some of the local shops.

"We're doing this for economic development," Larson said.

On April 6, Larson and most of the Jasper City Council members went to a meeting of the Newton County Quorum Court to request space in the courtyard square for the statue. The courtyard square is county property.

"We kept trying to find a place that belonged to the city where we could put it, but we just couldn't," Larson said.

The Quorum Court granted the city use of the courtyard's northwest corner -- prime real estate on Scenic Arkansas 7, which is also Court and Stone streets in downtown Jasper.

About 5,200 vehicles a day travel through Jasper on Arkansas 7, according to the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department. Jasper's population was 466 when the most recent census was taken in 2010.

Larson said the city plans to have a fundraising drive to pay for the statue, which could cost as much as $5,000.

She hopes to have the statue installed by the time the 20th Buffalo River Elk Festival is held June 23 and 24.

"But it's going to be pretty hard to pull it off by then," she said.

Michael Thomas, a Jasper alderman, said they might settle for a smaller than life-sized elk, but he would like a statue that's at least 6 feet tall.

Thomas said details, such as the material and size, have yet to be determined.

"We're just in the early stages of this right now," he said. "We want it to be durable and last for many, many years."

While Boxley Valley, 19 miles west of Jasper, is famous for elk sightings, elk don't actually wander into Jasper, Thomas said.

"We don't have any elk in Jasper," he said. "We have a lot of deer and guineas and stuff."

The elk festival celebrates the reintroduction of elk to Newton County.

Elk were native to Arkansas but had been hunted to extinction locally by the 1840s, according to The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture.

Elk were reintroduced to the Boxley area in 1981 in a cooperative program run by the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, the National Park Service, the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation and local landowners. Licensed hunting of elk began in 1998.

NW News on 04/17/2017

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