One of the advantages in living on a farm with a creek running through is that you have your own ready, available, natural water recreation nearby and handy. I grew up on Otter Creek, which runs from the north side of Pea Ridge northward until it empties into Big Sugar Creek at the Arkansas-Missouri state line.
All the water from the town of Pea Ridge and much of the plateau on which Pea Ridge lies drains into Otter Creek, so when there are big rains around Pea Ridge Otter Creek is a big creek. Most of the time it is a fairly small creek. The main headwaters begin at Morrison Spring at the north end of Clark Street. Along the way, water is added by several small springs, then at the Charles Day farm, another sizable spring empties into the creek. That spring not only adds water, but also lowers the creek's water temperature. I'll mention that later. Then just down the way, more water comes into Otter Creek from Cardin Branch, coming from the east near where Patterson Road intersects with Patton Road. Finally, Otter Creek runs under State Line Road and empties into Big Sugar Creek near the Jacket Bridge.
I suppose kids of all generations have loved to swim. Although we had very few public pools in the 1940s and 1950s, we were not without places to go swimming. Along the creeks, one could find numerous swimming holes, as we called them, none of them being ideal swimming places, but often serving the purpose very well for those of us who just wanted to swim, to have fun and to cool off during the hot days of summer. The location, shape and depth of the swimming holes often changed year by year, being changed significantly when the creek flooded after big rains and heavy runoff. When the creek flooded, the swift water would move tons of the loose gravel, sometimes filling up our old swimming hole, but also usually opening up one or two pretty good new swimming holes. We had nearly a thousand feet of the creek running through our farm, and often that gave us two or three pretty fair swimming holes right there close to home. We put them to good use. After a day in the hay field, the creek became very inviting as a place to cool off and freshen up before turning to the evening chores.
Big Sugar Creek also offered some very attractive and popular places to swim and have picnics. Probably the most popular and best known, back then, was Red Bank. That part of Big Sugar was on the Ed Webb Farm, now Kently Webb's place. You would head across the field to Red Bank from the corner where State line Road intersects with the north end of Patterson Road. Also popular was another nearby spot on Big Sugar approaching the old Jacket Bridge. The old bridge was a bit farther down the creek than today's bridge, and the wide, flat gravel bar in that area was great for picnics and as a beach from which to play in the water. The downside to that great spot was that the water was very cold. Of course on a really hot day the cold water was inviting, but that water was cold enough to turn you blue if you stayed in too long at a time. I think the Otter Creek water which emptied into Big Sugar just above that beach was responsible for the cold temperature, coming as it did fresh from nearby springs and streams, including the Cardin Branch, most of which ran through shaded areas with very little exposure to the sun's warmth.
We shared the water with water skippers, frogs, fish, crawdads and snakes, as well as the occasional cow or dog or mink. But swimming in the creek was too much fun to leave it to the critters. Interestingly, I have never seen an otter on Otter Creek. Maybe there were some at one time, hence the name.
Farm life wasn't all work. We found some time to play and to swim. We could have our diving spots, our rope swings to swing over the water and drop in. As time went on we began to hear of public pools, or fancy swimming pools like one connected with the Lakeside Restaurant at Lake Atalanta in Rogers. But those fancy pools cost money which we didn't normally have, especially when we had a perfectly fine swimming pool right there at home. The coming of Beaver Lake brought big advances in our sources of water recreation; but even before the lake, we thought we had our treasures in Otter Creek and Big Sugar Creek and the White River. They were treasures. They were great!
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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. The opinions expressed are those of the author. He can be contacted by e-mail at joe369@century tel.net, or call 621-1621.
Editorial on 08/24/2016