EAST at West Fork High School has led the way on a brilliant project dubbed “ The EAST Conservation Corps.” The goal of this project is to re-open the Lake Wedington State Park, which originally closed right before COVID-19 due to a lack of staffing. While they now do have a few full-time employees at the park, those few alone are not enough to get the park running and on its feet for public use again. We aim to organize trips to the park where we work on restoring the campsites, trails, and historical buildings. This project is led by one of West Fork’s student champions: Olivia Wood.
Last school year in February we made contact with the park's manager Steven Walton, and we arranged a scouting trip to the park along with our sister EAST program at Farmington High School. There we discussed what the park needed to help restore it, things like trail maintenance, campsite restoration, and the clearing of buildings along with the general area. That April we had our first full-scale trip to the park where we split the students into three different groups one to focus on trail markings, the other to clear the main area of the park of branches and debris, and the last to focus on general maintenance on the trails ( filling holes, clearing blockages, and removing potential hazards.) It was a huge success and through our school's hard work, we generated nearly 100 hours of community service hours for West Fork Students.
Immediately after the summer ended Olivia started working again with the park staff to plan another trip, this time with a collaboration of Farmington High School and Prarie Grove High School, who joined the project over the summer. During the summer and fall months, the state park faced major storms leaving fallen trees, branches, and tree limbs all over the main part of the park. When we had our second scouting trip we were able to evaluate the manpower we would need to clear all the damage. We also planned to clean out the bathroom and concession stand building. Due to not being used for years, it was covered in spider webs, dead insects, dust, and dirt dauber nests.
Just days before the trip we faced a couple of issues as there were expected to be thunderstorms and lots of rain the day of the trip. So last minute we had to cancel and rearrange the trip for the end of the week. Thankfully it went off without a hitch The US Forest Service sawyers had come on a previous date and cut down all the limbs into manageable pieces. West Fork was able to bring 32 people and combined with the other two schools we had over 50 students joining in the restoration effort.
We were able to finish every goal we planned for, along with finishing a couple of other jobs that needed to be done: cleaning out the concessions stand building, going through the cabins and sorting through all items inside, walking the trail, clearing fallen branches, and clearing trash.
This project work day was a huge success and Lynn Kutter, a reporter from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, came to the park and interviewed Olivia Wood, and the Facilitators about the project and took pictures of all of the students working. These events generated over 300 community service hours just West Fork students alone.
This ongoing project is a wonderful thing to be a part of, and I cannot wait to continue to lead this project into the future. I am so excited to see all of our hard work pay off and get to see Lake Wedington re-open for public use again, so people can experience the beauty and natural wonder of this park that I have been able to experience over the past year.