Arkansas Canoe Club Forums

The Saturday, June 21 edition of the Arkansas Democrat Gazette had an article on page 2B detailing the closing of Richland Creek Campground for rehabilitation. Apparently the road along Falling Water Creek that goes to the campground from the south has become impassible due to a mudslide and the Forest Service has been prompted by this to close the campground at this time in conjunction with their rehabilitation plan. I suggest we let our official ACC representatives work with the Forest Service to do what they can to keep the down time to a minimum. We paddlers need to work together with all parties, all the various recreational forest users and Forest Service, through our club representatives for a good outcome to this temporary problem.

Mike Coogan, alias Captain Aleve

I hate to say this, and I may be completely off base here, but usually: campground rehabilitation or upgrades = FEES.

Prater

As far as fees go it often depends on two things 1) is this a planned upgrade with major renovations and 2) is there the manpower to maintain, check, enforce a fee station. The good news is this is being done because of the road not for major renovations and I doubt they have the manpower to maintain a fee station. Keep your fingers crossed.

The campground closure is probably a direct result of the road closure making it more difficult and thus more expensive to access the campground for even minor maintenance. We may want to "monitor" the situation, maybe make a few calls to emphasize that this is a frequently used and popular campground etc. just to be sure no permanent closure occurs, but my take would be that perhaps there are other issues where we could make more of a difference. This campground is used by many types of outdoors people, not just boaters, and I doubt it would be acceptable to anyone to abandon the road and leave the campground permanently closed. I think this one will work itself out whether we get heavily involved or not. Any governmental types reading this should take my message as a "vote of confidence" that I'm trusting them to fix it as soon as possible.

The campground is closed for 2 reasons.

1) The landslide on Falling Water Road blocks vehicle traffic from the South.

2) Erosion to the bridge abutments blocks vehicle traffic from the North.

When we boated Upper Richland a couple weeks back, there was a large pile of gravel blocking the Northern approach to the bridge with signs stating the closure of the campground until the repairs were made. See mention in trip short trip report


As of then you could still reach the last curve in the road on the north side of the campground bridge by vehicle, which has some limited parking spaces. Additional limited parking is available uphill at the next curve at the trailhead.

The bridge work shouldn't take too long to complete, assuming they have the funds to do so. The landslide will take lots more $$ and effort.

Does anybody know if the campground has been re-opened? This weekend looks like perfect camping weather and Richland would be ideal, even if we have to "hike-in" across the bridge.

Check with the USFS Piney Creek District office for current status. Located in Jasper, it is the office that maintains the campground. 870-446-5122


There are a couple of primitive campsites on the north side of the campground bridge if you can beat others to them.

As of a week ago the berm which blocked the bridge was removed and the campground appeared to be open although some of the closed signs were still up. Several signs had been taken down, so the signs left up may have just been an oversight.

We were able to drive across the campground bridge all the way to the landslide. It is going to take them a while to fix the road. It looks like the whole mountain fell down on top of it.

Actually we were down doing a crag cleanup at Sams a few weeks ago and I was talking to the forest ranger. He said it is back open for now but they were talking about closing it for a short time again. They got some heavy machines down there to plow the road from the North and removed the berm. This was just a few weeks ago. The landslide is still there and they dont know when they are going to get it out.