History of Little Rock Water Supply

The lake behind this park was first called the Alum Fork Reservoir. Little Rock built it with Burns and McDonnell, a Kansas City engineering firm, between July 1936 and May 1938, and the first water reached the city on April 17, 1938. The name honors Gertrude Winona Overman, wife of Mayor Dick Overman. A 39-inch line runs thirty-five miles to Little Rock, which had drawn on the Arkansas River until its water was judged unsafe to drink in the 1930s. A Civilian Conservation Corps camp at Walnut Bottom lies under the lake.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Pinnacle Mountain State Park — 20 mi
  A day-use state park west of Little Rock around a 1,011-foot Ouachita peak, with a strenuous summit trail, the Arkansas Arboretum and a visitor center above the Arkansas River.
• Lake Ouachita State Park — 23 mi
  The state park on Arkansas's largest lake, built around a spring a homesteader called healing in 1875.
• Hot Springs National Park — 23 mi
  A federal reservation since 1832, where rain from the Ouachita Mountains comes back as 143-degree water along a row of bathhouses.
• Buckstaff Bathhouse — 23 mi
  The Edwardian bathhouse on Bathhouse Row that opened in 1912 and has run ever since, with a new concessioner expected in 2027.

More markers nearby

• Perry County in the Civil War — 15 mi
• Perry County Court House — 15 mi
• The Salem Campground — 20 mi
• 11th Arkansas Infantry, C.S.A. — 21 mi