When they weren’t tending their row crops, orchards, beehives and vineyard on top of Mount Magazine, my great-grandparents and their children could enjoy some spectacular views from their 160-acre homestead on the east end.

Benjamin and Louise Benefield moved to the top of Arkansas’ tallest mountain in the early 1880s. My dad’s mother, Laura Benefield Poynor, was one of their eight children. She was born July 4, 1884, perhaps not far from the sign that now designates the old Benefield homestead as the Benefield Picnic Area of Mount Magazine State Park.

One of Grandmother’s sister died on the mountain, either at birth or very young. She is buried in a small, well-tended grave by the side of the road entering the picnic area. James Hardy, the engineer who built the first road from Havana up the mountain in the late ’30s was known for never veering from his surveyed plans. But he came to love the mountain and its people and when plans for the road called for it to run through the grave, he moved the road to its present path just past the grave.

I’m sure the Benefields, who moved off the mountain in 1909, could have never imagined that a small group of their descendants would gather at the old homestead in 1996 to see that part of the newly designated state park named in honor of the family.

This year, the overgrown hiking trails established in the late 1930s leading to the panoramic vistas surrounding the Benefield homestead were cleared and opened once again to the public.
Several hiking trails were among recreational attractions being built in this area by WPA laborers until World War II halted the work. Nature soon reclaimed the trails and they remained forgotten until Mount Magazine State Park Interpreter Don Simons began efforts to re-establish them.

"We were planning to build additional trails connecting Benefield Loop with Bear Hollow and Horse Camp. We found the old trails first. Then I discovered the 1938 plans for recreation construction in that whole area in a seldom-used file at the Russellville Forest Service Office," Simons explained. "Our research saved us hundreds of hours of labor. We were able to uncover and recreate the original trails. We also located many other things clearly described in the plans."

Simons and John Greenfield, a volunteer from Fort Smith, began clearing the overgrown trails last year. This summer, an energetic AmeriCorps crew helped finish clearing the Benefield East Loop and part of the Bear Hollow trails. Both are now accessible from the original Benefield Trail, now named Benefield West Loop.

"The most significant part of the re-opening of these old trails this summer is rediscovering what attracted people to the mountain in the beginning – the beautiful scenery and the health benefits of the ‘thinner,’ and cooler air," Simons says. "Some of the most rugged and beautiful scenery in the park is now some of the easiest to get to – thanks to these trails being so easy to walk."

Some parts of the trails are so wide and smooth you could almost walk them in your Sunday shoes. But other areas are more rugged, such as descending dry stacked natural stone steps that lead to a spring and an unusual grouping of large, rectangular rocks Simons calls the “stone sofa.”

Smoother, flatter rock stairs that were under 6 to 15 inches of sediment when Simons and Greenfield found them last winter were cleaned and re-set by 10 AmeriCorps members this summer. The crew accomplished an “enormous amount of work” in five weeks, he says.

"This (East Loop Trail) leads down to some beautiful overlooks. One I call Sunrise Rock and the other Inspiration Point,” Simons notes.

While most notes and drawings on the old plans he found were perfectly understandable, one directive Simons read was positively puzzling. "Remove Bandstand," was plainly printed on an area shown between the Benefield Picnic Area and the West Loop Trail, now covered with trees. How could there ever have been a bandstand there, Simons wondered, and why?

After much research, he found the answer on the front page of the May 15, 1938, Paris Express newspaper. The headline said: "5,000 Attend Mt. Magazine Celebration, Over 850 Automobiles Go To Mountain Without a Serious Mishap."

The huge public event celebrated the government’s Land Use Project, and the WPA, Civilian Conservation Corps and all others who labored to create the recreational facilities detailed in the 65-year-old drawings Simons had found.

Seating was arranged for 2,000 and the great caravan of 850 automobiles was led by "the State Police" up to my great-grandfather’s old homestead where the event was held. Traffic was directed by "Battery E, 142nd Field Artillery, Arkansas National Guard of Paris."

The area towns of Paris, Havana, Magazine, Subiaco, New Blaine, Blue Mountain, Waveland, Belleville and Danville were "well represented, as were cities and towns from distant points," wrote Paris Express reporter Vela Kinney.

She said band members from Paris (32); Waldron (28); Scranton (27); Charleston (35) and Arkansas Tech College (35) "mixed their notes with the mountain breezes and the echoes of the strains were heard in the valley many feet below." And they all played on the "Bandstand" ordered removed in the note on the 1938 maps now being put to good use by Simons.

Earlier this year, I enjoyed being among several hundred people who attended the groundbreaking for a fabulous, $32.6 million lodge, conference center and cabins complex to be open on the mountaintop in 2006. The lodge, new trails and the park’s other recreational features are certain to attract thousands of visitors in the future. But after learning about the huge event that took place on my great-grandfather’s old homestead in 1938, I’m wondering if anything can ever top that high old time on the mountain. I wish I could have been there.

 

Linda Seubold, editor of Entertainment Fort Smith Magazine, can be reached at lindaseubold@efortsmith.com. Read her archived columns and articles online.

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