Park readied for spring visitors

New playground equipment has been installed near the small pavilion at Pea Ridge City Park and near the bathrooms. Birdhouses have been put up on several trees. Tree limbs have been cut. Lights have been added. And all playground equipment has been painted red and black to reflect the school colors.

“There’s more stuff to come,” Nathan See, city street superintendent said, explaining that cutting the tree limbs was in response to parents comments that it was difficult to see across the playground.

A volunteer built the bird houses and gave them to the Parks Commission, See said.

“Larry’s been doing a good job,” See said referring to Larry Majors, a street employee who works on the parks. He said Majors found the new playground pieces from a daycare that went out of business.

See said the new lights and removing the lower tree limbs allows more light on the trail and playground areas.

“We’d like to put more equipment up in Givens Park,” See said, “but we have problems out there with vandalism.”

See said “check dams” were also placed in drainage ditch areas to clean the water that flows through the ditches. “It’s a design we were shown when we went to Hot Springs for storm water training.”

Pea Ridge City Park is located north of West Pickens Street on Hayden Road (Arkansas Highway 265). The pavilions are available on a first-come, first-served basis.