Renovations at Basin Spring Park highlighted a busy past month for the Eureka Springs Parks and Recreation Department.
“It was another eventful month for parks, as it always seems to be,” parks director Sam Dudley told members of the parks commission during their monthly meeting Tuesday, April 15. “We saw tons of progress at Basin Park. It was a very busy spring break in town, as well as out at Lake Leatherwood. We were packed pretty much every day.
“And, it was the start of some other exciting projects, such as the completion of the fourth edition of our pocket trail maps, which we’ll hopefully get moved to printing soon. There’s new Leatherwood merchandise, and the repair of a water line at Grotto Spring ….”
All of the new concrete at Basin Spring Park has been poured and other than a few small tasks, the project will be completed with the reconstruction of the fountain, Dudley said.
“The fountain is back in town. It’s beautiful,” he said. “It’s a nice, lovely, dark green color. It’s all the same color, which is nice. No big calcium deposits or anything like that on it. So, once that structure underneath [the fountain] is poured, we’ll set the fountain in, hook up the water lines, do the rest of it, and should be good.”
One last addition for the park, which has been teased on social media, will be the addition of a new Humpty Dumpty sculpture, commissioners were told.
“We also have one last surprise, I may call it a surprise, but I’m sure everyone knows by now,” Dudley said. “We’re hoping at the May fine arts parade to unveil a new Humpty sculpture for the park. The beloved Humpty that went away is making his return.”
Commission chair Mark Ingram said he drives by the park often and is impressed with the transformation.
“Just driving by that today was, and I drive by every day, but today just all of a sudden, it kind of popped,” Ingram said. “You can kind of see that it’s all … it’s like when you build a house and you get right down to the last trim work. You can see it’s there, so yeah, and it really looks good.”
In his director’s report, Dudley also told commissioners that permits are being accepted for vendors for the third annual Jamboreeka event at the ballfields at Lake Leatherwood to celebrate the July 4th holiday.
“Food and beer vendors, merchandise vendors, non-profits, there’s an application for each one of those things,” Dudley said. “So, if you’re interested in signing up to be a vendor at Jamboreeka, they’re out there. They’re either on Facebook or the [parks] website so you can download them.”
Vendors offering food, drinks and merchandise will pay a $50 permit fee while non-profits will be free, Dudley said.
“There will be a thousand people there at the event, so yeah, it’s worth it,” he said.
Dudley reported that the annual spring tree giveaway will take place starting at 9 a.m. Tuesday, May 6, at the Eureka Springs Community Center.
“Come get a couple free plants and put them in your ground and let them grow,” he said.
The next day, Wednesday, May 7, the parks department will have its second native plant and invasive plant removal day at Lake Leatherwood Park as part of a watershed grant, Dudley said.
“If anyone wants to come join for that, it’s kind of fun,” he said of the event that will start at 9 a.m. “Clear Spring kids come out for it, and we just walk around and look at plants and then pull the bad plants out.
“We start around 9 and then go until about 11, 11:30, with everybody meeting near the playground,” Dudley said. “We’ll take a quick break for lunch, and then I think we try to be wrapped up around 3 or 3:30 at the latest.”
