As part of a major maintenance project, Lake Ouachita State Park partnered with the Arkansas Correctional Institute this winter to renovate a 42-foot tour boat that has been operational on the lake for the last 25 years.
Built at least 50 years ago, the 50-passenger boat is one of several large boats of its kind currently on the lake and is used today for interpretive tours of Lake Ouachita.
James Wilborn, the state park's assistant superintendent, said the boats were built out West in the 1950s or 1960s and brought to Arkansas in the 1960s or 1970s, and were originally used as camper boats at Spillway Resort.
Wilborn was fresh out of college when he began working as the interpreter on Lake Ouachita in 1990.
"We had three-day waiting lists because we were using rental boats, just 10 people at a time," he said. "I sent a proposal (to the state) saying 'We need a bigger boat,' and they never got me a bigger boat. Finally, after a couple years of pounding them, I convinced them that if they purchased this boat they would make more money and could fit more people."
Prices were compared for new and used boats and, in 1993, the park purchased the boat used for $13,000, instead of new for $55,000.
"It's been in consistent use since then, taking thousands of people in the last 25 years. Now we've renovated it and turned it back into new, so now it'll last another 25 years," Wilborn added. "I've spent hundreds of hours behind that boat."
As a state agency, the park works closely with the Arkansas Correctional Institute on various projects. This winter, the boat was transported to Tucker Prison in southern Arkansas to be renovated by inmates in a prison work program.
"(The work program) is where the prisoners there are learning things like drafting and welding and things like that, so they were able to do the work there at the prison," Wilborn said.
"We'd never had the boat out of the water because it's so large, it requires a house boat mover and special permits and stuff to move it anywhere. So that took some coordinating, to get it physically moved to their facility where they could spend three months taking it apart, rebuilding it and putting it back together," he said.
A dedication for the newly renovated boat was held Wednesday, and the tours have since resumed. For $10 per person individuals or groups can take tours of Lake Ouachita, eagle-watching tours, kayaking trips, and, beginning at the end of March, starlight tours will be available through the spring, summer and fall months. Wilborn said each tour is around an hour and a half to two hours long.
"We have school groups, civic groups that come in from the Hot Springs area and Little Rock, so we'll do everything from nursing homes to church groups and things like that and we'll do a special tour for them. Sometimes we'll include a lunch or a dinner, which is scheduled ahead of time," Wilborn said. "Ouachita is so big and it's surrounded by national forest, the easiest way to see it is to get out on it to experience it, and that's what the boat does."
Local on 03/19/2017