The land where Pinnacle Mountain State Park is today used to be a dump site for local residents.
In 1975, a thousand volunteers joined together for a park-wide cleanup effort. Seven hundred of the volunteers were Boy Scouts from all across Arkansas.
Old washing machines, furniture, cans, bottles, building materials, and even parts of cars were picked up and disposed of in a sanitary landfill, with the help of 5-ton dump trucks supplied by the U.S. Army Reserve. Some say the most unique find was a 5-foot long diamondback rattlesnake on the east side of Pinnacle Mountain.
The massive cleanup took 4 hours and over 1 million pounds of trash was collected.
The Boy Scouts received a special patch for their work with the outline of Pinnacle Mountain and the Boy Scout fleur-de-lis inside, surround by the words, “Pinnacle Mountain Cleanup 1975.”
The park opened two and a half years later, becoming the 35th Arkansas State Park.
Pinnacle Points is a 1-minute series on KUAR exploring Pinnacle Mountain State Park.
