Listing Through Life

Pinnacle Mountain, located between the Maumelle and Little Maumelle Rivers just upstream from the Arkansas River, rises 1,011 feet. It’s reason the nearby rivers, lake, and city are called “Maumelle,” which is French for “breast.” Those wacky French explorers had been away from  home a long time. Here’s what it looks like from the Big Dam Bridge over the Arkansas River, with the I-430 bridge in the foreground. (Picture taken in 2009.)

I’ve been to the park many times to bird and hike, although I’ve only climbed the mountain three times. The last time was in early 2023. On the way down, I tore my meniscus so badly that I lived in pain for a year and a half and eventually had knee surgery. So when I say “last” time, I’m pretty sure I mean it literally. You can read about my 2011 climb and see my photos here.

But I needed to get my passport stamped, so I went again.

I walked the two trails where I regularly bird. The first is the Kingfisher Trail, a short, paved loop that runs along the Little Maumelle River where there are some giant bald cypress trees that a marker says could be more than 500-years old.

From there I went to the Arkansas Arboretum trail. It’s another paved loop, this one about three-quarters of a mile long. I always think of it as a great place to bird, but I just checked my records — I’ve been there nine times and have only seen 43 species, none of them particularly unusual.

This museum is about four miles up the road from Plum Bayou. It’s a collection of buildings that were connected to local cotton farming. Displays and equipment explain the process of producing cotton, from planting the seeds to the finished product.

The visitor center and museum is in an old brick store built in 1912. Another section was added in 1929 as the Scott post office. It now houses special exhibits (currently one on Chinese immigrants in Arkansas).

The museum does a good job of explaining the process of farming cotton and makes it interesting.

Some random displays from the musuem:

The spread of the boll weevil.

Another building, a reconstruction, houses an original, fully restored cotton gin, where seed was separated from the cotton, and the cotton was baled.

Seed Warehouse No. 5 explains the process of storing, drying, and bagging cotton seeds. The doors to the building are through two Cotton Belt railroad cars.

An aerial view from … ? The store (visitor center) is on the right. Several of the buildings on the left are still there, but not part of the park.

We were hungry, so we walked through some of the buildings quickly and skipped the old tractor collection entirely. But it’s worth the time to visit — certainly a far cry better than the Lower White River Museum.

On a lazy Saturday morning, my wife and I drove to the two state parks near Scott so I could get my passport stamped. (I’ve been to both parks before, but my wife hadn’t.)

On entering the Plum Bayou visitor center, we were greeted by a ranger who escorted us into the theater and then spent the next 20 minutes or so telling us everything he knew about Mound Builder Indians and the park. He was a nice guy, and I appreciated his enthusiasm, but you wouldn’t want to talk to him if you were in a hurry. He’s the kind of guy who, if you asked him what time it was, would tell you how to build a watch.

On our drive in, we noticed that the sign was missing. My wife asked the ranger about it, and 10 minutes later, we had our answer. The park used to be called Totlec Mounds, named for the Toltec Indians in Mexico who also built mounds. But historians don’t think the Toltecs got anywhere near Arkansas, so the site has been renamed for a local stream. It took the state a couple years to provide a sign with the new name, and just a few months later, a local lad, probably high on some substance, lost control of his car and destroyed it. They’re still waiting for another sign. I had to take my picture with a banner over the front desk.

The park preserves the location of a group of 18 mounds constructed, supposedly, between the 7th and 11th centuries. It’s thought that the area was used for ceremonial and burial purposes and that very few people actually lived here. Many of the mounds have been leveled by farming, but there are still two large ones that probably had temples or such on the top and a smaller conical mound used as a burial site. There was once an embankment and moat surrounding the site on three side, while an ox-bow lake did, and still does, border the other side. It is believed the builders arranged the mounds to be used as a solar calendar.

We walked outside so my wife could see the mounds, but it was too warm for a mile-long hike, and mounds of dirt don’t look any different up close. Also, I’d been there before and knew there wasn’t anything fascinating that couldn’t be seen at a distance.

Here’s a photo I took in January, 2023 that shows the proximity of the larger mound to the ox-bow lake.

We were the only visitors for the entire time we were there, which surprised us on a Saturday morning.

Another twenty-minute drive from the Delta Heritage Trail brought me to this park.

The road in to the park dead-ends at a five-car parking lot. The park is unmanned, so I had to do my first emblem-rubbing to get my stamp. I did a practice rub, using the colored pencil I placed in my car for just this purpose, to make sure I wouldn’t mess up another passport. You can see the medallion embedded in the sign below.

A boardwalk winds back into the swamp, with signs along the way giving the history of the spot.

And swamp it is. This has been a very dry spring, and I was surprised to see how much water remained. I wonder if the state deliberately floods it to keep it authentic. Here’s the monument.

It’s hard to read, even on the spot. It says:

“THIS STONE MARKS THE BASE ESTABLISHED NOV. 10, 1815 FROM WHICH THE LANDS OF THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE WERE SURVEYED BY UNITED STATES ENGINEERS. THE FIRST SURVY FROM THIS POINT WAS MADE TO SATISFY THE CLAIMS OF THE SOLDIERS OF THE WAR OF 1812 WITH LAND BOUNTIES. ERECTED BY THE DAUGHTERS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. SPONSORED BY THE L’ANGUILLE CHAPTER.”

And that was it. I did see a Prothonotary Warbler and a Baltimore Oriole in the swamp. I walked back down the boardwalk and headed for home.

Track my progress here.