PEA RIDGE — The 22nd annual Pea Ridge Mule Jump, expected to be attended by thousands of people, began as an aside to earlier fall festivals. On Oct. 13, 1984, the Pea Ridge Chamber of Commerce sponsored a Fall Fest.
The next year, a mule jumping event was added to the festival then called “Battlefield Daze.”
The festival, held on the downtown school grounds, included a trail ride, coon dog competitions, craft sales and other events.
“Tim Summers at the bank asked me about mule jumps,” said Paul Arnold, who was vice president of the Pea Ridge Coon Hunter’s Association at the time.
He said Rick McCrary was president.
Arnold said he went to Oklahoma to see a mule jump to get an idea about it and came home to put one on here.
“The first four people I talked to were Tommie Yeargain Sr., Negel Hall, Don Shockley and Dale Shrader. We hunted together,” Arnold said.
That first year, they had a trail ride on mules riding up Arkansas Highway 265 to State Line Road and down Patterson Road and back to the school grounds, Arnold said. They also had a coon hunt Saturday night after the festival. There was also a UKC Coon Hunters’ Association coon dog show.
“They were all registered hounds - Walkers, Black and Tans, Redbones - ours were Walkers,” Arnold said. “Ronnie Smith, he had Redbones. Don Shockley mostly had Walkers.”
Arnold remembered there was a ham and bean supper in the Home Economics building which raised enough money to pay for everything.
“We didn’t know what kind of crowd would show up. That driveway (near the bus barn at the school) was full of people. There were people down the sidewalks. I don’t know how many people there were ... they came from lots of places,” he said.
Arnold said he took flyers advertising the event to various coon hunts he attended. The first year, the jump was wooden, but after that, the group used one Negel Hall had built.
Peggy Hall, widow of Col. Negel Hall, said: “It was just a bunch of coon hunters getting together.”
In 1987, the Pea Ridge Chamber changed the name back to Pea Ridge Fall Fest and in 1988, the Lions Club took it over. In 1989, the Lions decided to call the festival the Pea Ridge Mule Jump and designate Pea Ridge as “Mule Jumping Capital of the World.” The Lions sponsored the Mule Jump as a fundraiser until 1999, when the club disbanded.
A group of volunteers calling themselves the Friends of Pea Ridge banded together to keep the Mule Jump going. In 2002, the Pea Ridge Parks Commission took it over.
Mule jumping comes from a tradition in coon hunting of having mules jump over fences rather than finding gates.
Hunters throw a blanket over the fence so the mule will jump it. Mules can jump flat footed. Once a mule walks up to the jumping barrier, it has three minutes to jump.
The mule has two tries to clear the barrier without knocking it down. Trainers can not touch the mule. They must get the mule to jump by word commands.
They can hold the reins and tug them.
Mules are eliminated until only one remains and that mule continues to jump until it reaches its limit. The mule seems to know instinctively when that limit is reached because it just won’t jump any more.
Mule Jump, Pages 23 on 10/06/2010