Eddy Sisson loves Dogpatch.
Never mind that the 34-year-old never visited the Newton County theme park while it was open; never got to fish its trout pond or ride the West Po'k Chop Speshul Railroad and Earthquake MaGoon's Brain Rattler or interact with characters from Al Capp's Li'l Abner comic strip that inspired the park.
Dogpatch USA had been shuttered since 1993, slowly disappearing under a blanket of creeping vegetation, when Sisson happened upon it in 2014 during an online search for abandoned places in Arkansas.
"I was blown away," Sisson said last week. "There was this theme park I didn't even know existed. I became obsessed with it, really."
He started a Facebook page dedicated to Dogpatch and founded Arkansas History Rescue, a group of volunteers who work to restore and preserve the state's "forgotten history."
[Gallery not loading above? Click here for more photos » arkansasonline.com/301trails/]
Sisson finally stepped foot on the Dogpatch grounds with the group Abandoned Arkansas in November 2014.
"That's when it hit me," says Sisson, who works in the master control room at Little Rock television station KARK-TV, Channel 4. "I felt like I had to do something for it."
He wanted to clean it up and rescue the remaining buildings -- some of which date to the 1800s -- from being devoured by nature.
Sisson got the OK to spruce up the site on a volunteer basis from Charles "Bud" Pelsor, whose company, Great American Spillproof Products, bought the land for $2 million in 2014.
"At first it was overwhelming. We went from one building to the next, clearing all the trees and stuff," Sisson says. "We did it in sections."
The mortgage on the Dogpatch property is held by Stewart Nance, his son John Pruett Nance and their attorney, Gregory Brent Baber. They filed suit against Great American Spillproof Products after it fell behind on lease payments and missed a balloon payment for the total amount due in August.
A foreclosure auction scheduled for Tuesday was canceled last week after Stewart Nance said a "solid buyer" had been found. He did not disclose the buyer's identity in a Democrat-Gazette report last week.
Sisson hopes the new owner is mindful of the structures on the property, especially the 19th century cabins and church.
"Those buildings are our history, and I don't want to see them go," he says.
See before and after photos of work done at Dogpatch by Sisson and other volunteers at arkansasonline.com/301trails/
email: sclancy@adgnewsroom.com
SundayMonday on 03/01/2020