One Month Away

We finally have all the plans made for the big johnboat-building event I wrote about in this column a few weeks back. The Arkansas State Park system has okayed the whole thing and it will be held at the Bull Shoals State Park Pavilion overlooking the lake, under big shady trees. We’ll be building an authentic old time White River johnboat, and have other finished johnboats to display, along with artifacts from the early half of the last century on display.

Best of all, we are going to have several old-timers on hand who were guides on the Ozark rivers, men who paddled those johnboats down the White, the Buffalo, the Current, Jack’s Fork, James and Big Piney rivers. You can hear stories about what the White River country was like before the dams were built, and you can see old photos of the river and the people and the fishing from that time.

The Parks Department has also approved the selling of items from that era, so vendors who have old fishing lures and fishing gear, gigs, sassafras paddles, carvings, artwork, or similar items can set up there beneath the shade trees and sell their items for only 10 dollars per table. If you are interested in antiques, you may find some valuable old lures and fishing gear for sale on that day. My uncle Norten is trying to get some of his sassafras paddles made by then.

This whole area is beautiful, and there is a huge State Park visitor center there, and a 100-year-old johnboat dug from a sandbar on the White River years ago. State Park Naturalist Julie Lovett will be with us too, with some events she has planned to make the day even more enjoyable. There will be food and soft drinks there all day, and we will have a big kettle of sassafras tea with ice, for visitors to enjoy as long as it lasts. Best of all you can see some wooden johnboats on display, the boats that made Ozark river fishing famous. Only a mile away, Jim Gaston’s White River Resort has a restaurant which he has turned into a real museum, and the other direction there is the high tower which gives you a tremendous view of the whole region from a vantage point even eagles don’t climb high enough to see.

If you want to try your hand at trout fishing on the White River, come and camp for a few days, and if you do stay a few days, just a ways farther south you will find the Buffalo River, the Ozark National Forest and the Blanchard Springs and Blanchard Springs caverns. There are beautiful campgrounds on Bull Shoals and the White River, and dozens of resorts that rent overnight cabins on the lake and river. So plan to spend a few days if you come.

I’ll be there with Myron Nixon, working on finishing a wooden johnboat like they once floated down the White River a hundred years ago. We’ll be there all day Saturday, July the 9th. If you need more information, or want to set up and sell old-time items, call me at 417-777-5227, or get in touch with naturalist Julie Lovett or other State Park officials by calling Bull Shoals State Park, 870-445-3629.