Gillian Rossi

During the winter, squirrels are congregating in their leafy nests, birds are migrating, but what about the reptiles at Pinnacle Mountain State Park? They are entering brumation! 

At Pinnacle Mountain State Park, the trees have knees. The Bald Cypress trees, at least. These giant, water-loving trees grow in and around the Big and Little Maumelle Rivers, and play an important role in the life of the park’s lowland forests. 

Long before Pinnacle Mountain State Park became a park, two of Arkansas’s most famous writers lived in a house near its base. The house, which sits next to Chief White Horse stable, was called Remembrance Farm. The writers who lived there were John Gould Fletcher and his wife, Charlie May Simon.

Geologists from all over the world come to explore Pinnacle Mountain State Park’s unique geological formations, and many have described the park as “pure geographical chaos.”

Pinnacle Mountain, and Little Rock itself, marks the point where various geographic regions in the state collide, including the Arkansas River Valley, Mississippi Alluvial Plains, Gulf Coastal Plains, and the Ouachita Mountains. This creates an extremely diverse landscape.

Ask around in Central Arkansas and you will run into few people who are unfamiliar with Pinnacle Mountain, or simply, “Pinnacle,” as most locals call it. However, Pinnacle Mountain has not always carried that title.

Pinnacle Mountain State Park has gone through several changes over the past century. In the 1920s, the area’s rocky slopes became the perfect place to harvest shale and sandstone for a variety of construction projects. The eastern slope of Pinnacle Mountain, where the East Summit Trail is today, was the major source of sandstone used to build the Lake Maumelle Dam in 1956. Segments of the East Summit Trail and the Base Trail follow the old quarry roads.

Many visitors reach the top of Pinnacle Mountain and notice large, dark birds soaring through the sky, lazily circling the summit of the mountain. These birds are labeled as eagles or hawks by many, but are usually none other than the turkey vulture.

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.