Petit Jean State Park

Arkansas'S First State Park, Established 1923 The Park The Entire Arkansas State Park System Grew Out Of. Its Civilian Conservation Corps Buildings, Including Mather Lodge, Form A National Register Historic District. · Morrilton, Arkansas

Petit Jean is where the Arkansas state park system began. The land was offered to the federal government as a national park in the early 1920s, turned down as too small, and taken on by the state instead in 1923 - which is why every other Arkansas state park exists. It sits on a flat-topped mountain between the Ouachitas and the Ozarks, and the whole point of the place is what the creeks have cut into that tableland: Cedar Creek drops ninety-five feet into a box canyon at Cedar Falls, and the two-mile round trip down to the base of it is the most-walked trail in the state. The Civilian Conservation Corps built the roads, the trails and Mather Lodge on the canyon rim in the 1930s, and that work is now a National Register historic district in its own right. There are pictographs in Rock House Cave, weathered sandstone turtles on the bare rock, a mountaintop car museum, and no entrance fee.

1285 Petit Jean Mountain Road, Morrilton, Arkansas, 72110, United States

The park is open year-round and Arkansas state parks charge no entrance fee. Trails are open dawn to dusk. The visitor centre keeps daytime hours with reduced winter hours. Mather Lodge, its restaurant and the cabins operate year-round and are booked through Arkansas State Parks; the swimming pool and boat rentals are summer only. The Museum of Automobiles on the mountain is separately owned and ticketed with its own hours. Highway 154 up the mountain is steep and winding and can close in ice.

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