Boyle Park
I have several caches inside Boyle Park showing the history of the WPA and CCC work inside the park but every time I drive by the entrance I think it might nice to share my memories of this awesome park so this cache fills that bill. My earliest memories of Boyle Park aren’t really mine but those of my parents who shared them with us as we were growing up. In the early forties
my parents moved to Little Rock and lived in an apartment downtown. At that time this park was considered out in the country as even when we moved to 200 N Van Buren in the early fifties Van Buren was the last paved road going west as University Avenue then called Hays street was still a dirt road. That was in the days before air conditioning and my parents along with some of their friends would drive out to Boyle Park on hot summer evenings and play cards on the picnic tables under the lights until it cooled down enough to go back to their hot apartments and go to bed. In 1951 when I was 6 years old we moved to the house on Van Buren and I started in the first grade at Holy Souls school. Every year in May we would have an all school picnic in Boyle Park. We would spend the whole day running around the horse trails, playing in the creek, as well as the playground equipment and catching crawdads using a little piece of bacon tied to a piece of kite string. Some of the older kids would even ride horses from the Fashion stables which were located on the south end of the park. Whenever we would have visitors from Illinois or Missouri where my folks were from we would always come out to Boyle Park for a picnic. Long before the birth of the frisbee after we finished eating we would sail hard cardboard paper plates back and forth trying to catch them. One particular memory of the park that sticks in my mind when we were little was the fact that there were cattle guards across the road at both the north and south entrances of the park. I remember driving over them and the loud rattling sound they made as the car tires moved over the bars. One day they replaced one of the cattle guards with what I’m assuming was a newer model because it no longer clanged when you drove over it. From that day on us kids referred to these two cattle guards as the loud boom boom and the quiet boom boom. Rock creek which flows through the park in the early days of the park’s history was a gently flowing stream with several houses on its banks where people fished and swam in its crystal-clear water. As Little Rock moved west and more and more of the forested area of the western part of the city creating natural buffers to slow the runoff from rain water, was cleared for: new homes, apartments and shopping centers, the amount of water in Rock creek increased dramatically especially during hard rains. This resulted in several of the houses along the creek banks flooding each time Little Rock got heavy rainfall. On September 13, 1978 the city received 8.10 inches of rain during the day resulting in tremendous flooding which resulted in a huge wave of water coming through the park and engulfing roads and businesses on Asher Avenue now called Colonel Glen and resulting in 10 deaths. That day will forever stand in my memory. In 1973 after returning home from 4 years in the Air Force I went to work for the Little Rock Parks Department initially working out of the maintenance shop located at the top of the hill overlooking the park and the maintenance of Boyle Park became one of my duties through 44 years with the department. Because of the rain that morning we were working out of the shop.
About 10 o’clock the Parks mechanic left the shop to visit a local parts store to get a part for a mower he was working on. As he headed down Boyle Park road to 36th street he saw the wave of water engulfing 36th street and several cars stranded in water which at that time was a couple of feet deep and continuing to rise. He came back up to the shop and conveyed the news that the road was flooded and people were stranded in their cars unable to get out and we needed to go help. We got a backhoe and headed down to 36th street to see if we could help. Robert drove the backhoe and I climbed into the bucket which he elevated and we started driving into the torrential flow of water toward three cars stranded about a hundred feet down the road close to the bridge. Needless to say, it was a pretty scary experience. As we approached each car not knowing exactly what to expect we were glad to see that each one was empty. After our foray into the flood waters we decided to go down the street the other way to see what was happening down there. What we found was a group of about 10 or 12 people standing out in front of the grocery store at 36th and Asher watching still rising flood waters roar across the parking lot with no way to get across to higher ground. Someone was unloading a boat to try to motor over to rescue the people but the water was raging so fast we were all afraid that the boat as well as the potential rescuers would end up washing down to Fourche creek. Seeing this we went back to our shop and got a long rope we used for tree work and were able to get it across the water to the people in front of the store where it was secured to a post in front of the store and as a group of us held onto the rope at the other end they were able to rescue all of the people while somebody in the boat held onto the rope as they made several trips back and forth to load up people and get them to higher ground.
Sharon Priest’s home in southwest Little Rock was one of those damaged by flood waters. Sharon who at that time chaired the City Beautiful Commission and would later serve on the Little Rock Board of Directors and as Secretary of State, made flood relief her number one priority ,founding the Fourche Creek Flood Reduction Project. Largely through her efforts and those of other Little Rock city officials the 20-million-dollar Corps of Engineers Plan 10 was born which created a 100-foot-wide channel along Fourche and Rock Creek to relieve the danger of future floods like occurred in 1978. Incorporated in this plan were several holding areas designated to slow down the force of the water allowing sediment contained in the flowing water to settle in specific areas that could be cleaned and removed after so much had accumulated thereby eliminating a lot of sediment and debris that would eventually pollute the streams and find its way into the Arkansas river. Because of its location as well as to protect existing natural areas in the park, Rock Creek through the heart of Boyle Park was designated as one of those spots and as a result, floods and becomes impassable during periods of heavy rain. The channel did extend quite a way into the creek as it enters the park resulting in a 100-foot channel spanning the what used to be easy pedestrian access to the first picnic area that you saw as you came into the park resulting in The Lost Picnic Area GC53AVA which still contains remnants of early park history. You are looking for
a plastic container about the size of a medium drinking cup.