Dr. Thomas William Hardison, physician for the Fort Smith Lumber Co., had a dream. He thought company holdings on Petit Jean Mountain should be a national park.
"Following a brief practice at Tucker in Jefferson County, Hardison secured a job as a contract physician for the Fort Smith Lumber Co. at its Fowler mill near Adona in Perry County in 1906," writes Don Higgins, the foremost authority on Petit Jean's history. "He soon began to include mountaineers as well as lumbermen among his patients.
"In April 1907, only five months after Hardison came to the mill, officials of the Fort Smith Lumber Co. arrived on an inspection tour, and the doctor accompanied them into remote areas owned by the company. When they reached Natural Bridge in Petit Jean's Seven Hollows area, the lumbermen began to debate the cost of logging this rugged land."
Hardison later said: "While listening to the discussion, the idea occurred to me that the trees might as well be left to live out their life-span unmolested by axe and saw, and the area converted into a park."
Hardison was born in April 1884 to Dr. William Harvey Hardison and Caroline Peavy Hardison in Columbia County in south Arkansas. He entered Hendrix College at Conway in 1902 and left after a year for Memphis Hospital Medical College. He returned to Arkansas in 1905 and received his medical license from the state.
During his first year at the Fowler mill, Hardison met teacher Julia Alma Hutto, who taught in a one-room school atop Petit Jean. They married in November 1907, and their only child was born the following year.
"When the reasonably accessible timber had been cut, Fowler mill
closed in 1909," Higgins writes. "The Hardisons elected to stay in the area rather than move to the next mill along the railroad. They settled atop the mountain in 1910. Practicing medicine on the mountain was hard work. The vertical terrain was challenging, and mountain residents had little ready cash; some couldn't repay the doctor even by bartering.
"To make ends meet, the Hardisons began a small farming operation at their home. Hardison also found a lucrative outlet in writing and publishing homespun country doctor features in national magazines such as Ladies' Home Journal, Country Gentleman and Taylor-Trotwood Magazine."
He wouldn't give up his dream of a national park. That campaign finally ended in 1921 when Stephen Mather, director of the National Park Service, decided that the parcel Hardison had suggested was too small to be a federal park. Hardison pivoted. He approached the Arkansas Legislature and found a willing audience.
Act 276 of 1923 was the beginning of what are now 52 Arkansas state parks, a system that many believe is the best in the country. On March 1, state officials gathered at Petit Jean State Park to mark the founding of the system.
"We did it on our own," Higgins says. "Federal largess in the form of the Civilian Conservation Corps came a decade later, but by golly, poor Arkansas established state parks on its own."
In 2018, Higgins wrote a 15-part series about Hardison for the Petit Jean Country Headlight, a weekly newspaper. He used the transcript of a recording made in 1955, two years before Hardison died.
Before being turned down by Mather, Hardison had convinced U.S. Rep. Henderson Madison Jacoway of Dardanelle to introduce a bill establishing Petit Jean National Park. In a 1937 article for American Planning and Civic Annual, Hardison wrote: "It happened that, as the bill was introduced, Stephen Mather ... was en route to Hot Springs National Park, and our representative wired me to meet Mather and try to enlist his support."
A group of Morrilton and Pine Bluff businessmen donated land for what would become the first state park after Fort Smith Lumber Co. backed out.
Hardison said: "I went to see Gov. Thomas C. McRae, whose birthplace and mine, incidentally, were only 12 miles apart, and whom I had known for most of my life, and told him what we were trying to do. He spoke briefly to his secretary and told me to go home and rest easy. Then, three weeks later, he signed the bill after it had been passed by both houses of the Legislature without a dissenting vote. He called me on the telephone and said, 'I hope you live to see on your mountain one of the best state parks in the country.'"
"Three years later, in 1926, the National Conference on State Parks met at Hot Springs, and Mather and others visited Petit Jean State Park, the only Arkansas state park at the time," Higgins writes. "Subsequent news and editorial coverage resulted almost immediately in the formation of another state park on Mount Nebo and then the donation by Fort Smith Lumber Co. of the Seven Hollows area and finally, on Dec. 24, a deed by Missouri Pacific Railroad to the people of Arkansas for the breathtaking feature we call Cedar Falls."
From 1933-41, the CCC constructed roads, buildings, bridges, lakes and trails on Petit Jean. Mather Lodge, the 24-room guest facility at the state park, remains among the most significant CCC structures in the state. The Cedar Falls Trail, which begins behind the lodge, is designated a national historic district.
"A brainchild of newly elected President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Civilian Conservation Corps began in 1933 with two purposes: to provide outdoor employment to Depression-idled young men and to accomplish badly needed work in the protection, improvement and development of the country's natural resources," Patricia Laster writes for the Central Arkansas Library System's Encyclopedia of Arkansas. "Camps housing 200 men each were established in every state.
"Most CCC projects in Arkansas were in national forests or on state-owned property. The fledgling state parks system benefited greatly. The work program created roads, trails, lodges, cabins, campgrounds, amphitheaters, bathhouses, picnic pavilions and beaches at six locations: Petit Jean, Mount Nebo, Crowley's Ridge, Devil's Den, Lake Catherine and Buffalo Point."
Company 1781-V came to Petit Jean in July 1933.
One man from Blytheville said after the Great Depression: "I learned more during those two years in the CCC than I learned in the next 10. I went in a boy, came out a man. Went in ragged, hungry, ashamed and defeated, came out filled with confidence and ready to challenge the world."
"The ones who stayed gained weight and enjoyed improved health and morale," Laster writes. "They learned good work habits, skills and attitudes. Many rose through the ranks of business and industry. As the economy picked up, more men were able to find jobs in their local areas. As the war threatened, many enlisted. Enrollments dipped, and camps disbanded."
Modern architectural styles were introduced to Petit Jean State Park in 1948 with construction of a two-story dormitory. Everything from cabins to swimming pools were added during the next three decades.
According to a history of the park compiled by the state Department of Parks, Heritage and Tourism: "Since the 1980s, the emphasis has been on restoration of original design elements during renovation of historic structures and modifying the structures from the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s to fit the dominant rustic style. Comprising a flat mountaintop with elevations ranging from 750 feet above sea level to a high point of 1,207 feet above sea level, the terrain includes areas along Cedar Creek Canyon, unique rock formations that include carpet rocks and turtle rocks, springs, caves and steep slopes.
"The park contains plants that are rare to the state. In August 2000, a forest fire swept through the Seven Hollows area. It burned 864 acres within the park, as well as private land. Although many of the large trees were killed, life returned to the area quickly."
Hardison continued to promote the park until his death. There were speeches, articles for newspapers and magazines, and hundreds of letters.
"Hardison's Legend of Petit Jean became a popular story, and he wrote two pamphlets under the series title A Place Called Petit Jean covering area folklore, geology, paleontology, natural history, the history of Anglo-American settlement and archaeology," Higgins writes. "The latter subject focused on Petit Jean Mountain's rich concentrations of aboriginal rock art, much of which Hardison discovered and catalogued.
"In 1929, the American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society awarded Hardison the Cornelius Amory Pugsley Award for his service in the state park movement. In 1935, Gov. Marion Futrell appointed Hardison to the state Park Commission. He served as a member of various incarnations of the state park authority for 14 years. Gov. Carl Bailey appointed him chairman of the commission in 1937, and he served in that capacity until 1942."
When Hardison spoke, people at the state Capitol listened.
"Hardison held tremendous sway over appointments to park administrative positions and concessions," Higgins writes. "When Winthrop Rockefeller settled on the mountain in 1953, he depended upon Hardison's judgment to find the right property and applicants for employment in the building of Winrock Farms.
"In addition to writing and farming, Hardison bought and sold resort-quality property on Petit Jean Mountain and, for several years, bottled and sold Petit Jean Spring Water from locally famous Tanyard Spring. In 1950, he entered a writing contest sponsored by Procter & Gamble and won $15,000."
After Hardison's death in April 1957, Rockefeller and close friend George Reynolds scattered his ashes over the mountain from a private plane. The state's Dr. T.W. Hardison Visitor Center is named for him.
"Depopulation during the Great Depression and World War II struck hard at the mountain community," Higgins writes. "But as farming diminished, new residents and recreation enthusiasts took up the slack. CCC-constructed park infrastructure drew increasing numbers of visitors, and various commercial enterprises blossomed.
"In 1953, acclaimed and prolific Arkansas author Bernie Babcock retired from the Museum of Natural History and Antiquities (now Little Rock's Museum of Discovery) and moved to a small cabin on Petit Jean's east end. She spent the rest of her life and wrote the last of her books while living on the mountain. That same year, Rockfeller came to the mountain and, with a worn-out cotton plantation as its core, built Winrock Farms, a showplace cattle operation featuring the Santa Gertrudis breed. Rockefeller later constructed the Museum of Automobiles to house his antique car collection."
After Rockefeller died in 1973, Winrock Farms split into a private cattle operation and the nonprofit organization Winrock International. When Winrock International moved its operations to Little Rock in 2004, the Winthrop Rockefeller Institute of the University of Arkansas was established on the site.
"In the 21st century, Petit Jean Mountain is still an area of striking natural beauty and the home of a robust community of people engaged in numerous endeavors," Higgins writes. "The population includes a large number of retired people as well as businessmen, farmers, cattlemen and recreation workers.
"In addition to the state park, Petit Jean hosts the Episcopal Diocese of Arkansas' Camp Mitchell on grounds formerly occupied by the YMCA. There's also the Lutheran Camp on Petit Jean."
The Museum of Automobiles opened in October 1964 and closed in the fall of 1975. In June 1976, the museum was reopened by 10 Arkansas antique car buffs and continues to operate as a nonprofit organization.
Thousands of writers have devoted millions of words to the mountain. None other than Washington Irving wrote in 1832: "Petit Jean Mountain on the Arkansas--a picturesque line of waving highlands--of mingled rock and cliff and wood, with far bottom below."