Hobbs State Park-Conservation Area

Hobbs State Park-Conservation Area is the largest state park in Arkansas, about 12,000 acres of forested hills along the southern shore of Beaver Lake in Benton, Carroll and Madison counties. Peter Van Winkle, a Fayetteville wagon maker, began buying the land in the 1840s and ran a steam sawmill that the Encyclopedia of Arkansas calls the first in the state and the largest. During the Civil War he went to Texas with his family and eighteen enslaved people. Bushwhackers probably burned the mill and his house on December 3, 1863. He rebuilt the mill in 1866 and the house in 1872. Arkansas Archeological Survey digs have found quarters and a graveyard of enslaved people, a blacksmith shop, and the mill and house sites.

Roscoe Hobbs of Bentonville bought part of the land in 1928 for his tie company and took over the Van Winkle estate in the 1940s. He died in 1965 and left the state first option to buy. The Arkansas Nature Conservancy bought the 11,744-acre estate in January 1979 for $3,250,000, and Governor Bill Clinton signed Act 128 on February 14, 1979, to authorize the state to take it over. It became a state management area in 1980 and took its present name in 2002.

The visitor center is on Highway 12 and was the first LEED-certified one in the Arkansas state parks. A 54-mile multi-use trail system serves hikers, bikers and riders, and the limestone bedrock makes caves, springs and sinkholes. It allows regulated hunting, so some trails and campsites close in fall and winter seasons. Eleven primitive campsites are available.