I noticed in the newspaper (that other newspaper) the other day that our area fire-fighters have been using some of the old landmarks at Lake Atalanta in Rogers in their training exercises. So, I think by now the old Lakeside Restaurant is no more, and the old skating rink across from it is no more. As far as I know, you don’t burn down swimming pools, but the old swimming pool adjacent to the Lakeside is also on the way to being gone or replaced.
That takes a pretty good chunk out of the recreational memories of many of us who were growing up through our teen years in the 1950s. I’m not going to say that I would have joined into a preservation movement to stop these great old places from being replaced, but they are fixtures in our memories and very much a part ofthe things we used to do when we were growing up. When we didn’t have other things we had to do, we would often say, “Let’s go to Lake Atalanta!”
Lake Atalanta came about in the years when Rogers was a much smaller city. Back then the water impounded by the Lake Atalanta dam was enough to keep Rogers supplied with water. Of course, that all changed after Beaver Dam was completed, and Beaver Lake became an abundant water supply for nearly all our area towns and countryside. We may sometimes forget that all the population growth that has taken place in Benton and Washington countiesover the past 40 years has been made possible by Beaver Lake water. Lake Atalanta used to be a pretty good-sized lake to us.
Now it seems like a little bitty lake.
My own family was not much on going out to eat in nice restaurants like the Lakeside back in the ’50s, and we had Otter Creek for swimming, but we often went to the skating rink at Lake Atalanta, and we very often used the picnic grounds there for family picnics. Nancy’s family was more likely to go swimming at the Lake Atalanta pool, but like our family, they didn’t go out to restaurants like Lakeside. I guess we thought of ourselves as too poor to go to Lakeside. We were more likely to go to the picnic area and eat hotdogs and “baloney” sandwiches, or SPAM sandwiches, and we did that pretty often atthe Lake Atalanta picnic grounds. Through the years, I’m sure all the Lake Atalanta facilities have worn down, and the city of Rogers is engaged now in upgrading the whole complex. It should be a great place again.
Nancy was telling me that on the day we got engaged, we first went to a picnic at Lake Atalanta with her family, the Marvin and Jewell Dean family, Glen and Zoe Foster family, and others. I haven’t been able to remember that particular picnic, but I do well remember the asking her to marry me and making our plan to go to Fayetteville to get the engagement ring. That was Aug. 27, 1960.
Our family had some really big family reunions there on the Lake Atalanta picnic grounds. When we didn’t have our summer family gathering at Grandpa Scott Nichols’ house, or Uncle Frank Holcomb’s house, or Aunt Anna’s house, we went to Lake Atalanta. Actually, we didn’t say Lake Atalanta like Lake At-a-Lan-Ta. We said it like Lake At-Lanta, or Lake A-lan-a. New Yorkers can probably say Lake At-alan-ta pretty easily, but for us Southerners it takes too long to say all that. Some of us slower talkers say it like Lake A-lay-yun-a. We just spiffy up the “lan” and make it “lay-yun.”
When I was in college at Fayetteville in 1958 and 1959, I didn’t do much socializing at school. But after I got my first car, my brown 1949 6-cylinder Pontiac sedan with the cracked block and rusted floorboards, I could drive back home to Pea Ridge on weekends. My car cost $200 in 1958. I nearly always went skating at the roller rink at Lake Atalantaon Saturday nights. I never took a date, and I never found a date there, but I liked being out among the skaters. I never learned to skate backwards or to twirl around as the really good skaters could do, but I didn’t do too badly skating frontwards. After Nancy and I started going out together, we tended to go to the movies at the Victory Theater on South 2nd Street in Rogers, or to the Plaza Theater on West Central in Bentonville, but we still did the picnics at Lake Atalanta.
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Editor’s note: Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge, is an award-winning columnist, a retired Methodist minister with a passion for history. He is vice president of the Pea Ridge Historical Society. He can be contacted by e-mail at joe369@ centurytel.net, or call 621-1621.
Opinion, Pages 5 on 11/07/2012