PHOTO: From left: Deputy Regional Forester Mary Moore of the U.S. Forest Service; Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders; Parks, Heritage and Tourism Secretary Shea Lewis; and state Sen. Missy Irvin, R-Mountain View, announce the effort to designate Blanchard Springs Caverns as a state park on Dec. 8, 2025. | Photo by Tess Vrbin/Arkansas Advocate
By TESS VRBIN | Arkansas Advocate
North Arkansas’ Blanchard Springs Caverns is in the process of becoming Arkansas’ 53rd state park, Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders announced Monday.
Sanders and Parks, Heritage and Tourism Secretary Shea Lewis signed a memorandum of understanding with the U.S. Forest Service to begin redesignating Arkansas’ second-largest cave system, which sits in the Ozark-St. Francis National Forest in Stone County.
The cave system includes eight and a half miles of explorable limestone caverns and access to a creek that flows into the White River. It has been open to the public since 1973, and Sanders said at Monday’s news conference that more than 70,000 people visit the caves per year.
Sanders said Blanchard Springs Caverns “will elevate the best state parks in America” and “can rival Carlsbad Caverns or Mammoth Cave,” national parks in New Mexico and Kentucky, respectively.
In 1996, Arkansas voters approved a constitutional amendment that increased the state sales tax by one-eighth of one cent to fund land conservation. Sanders noted that this occurred during the administration of her father, former Gov. Mike Huckabee.
Reinvesting this revenue in parks like Blanchard Springs Caverns bolsters Arkansas’ multibillion-dollar tourism industry, Sanders said.
Her husband, First Gentleman Bryan Sanders, chairs the Natural State Initiative, which the governor launched shortly after taking office in 2023 in an effort to expand Arkansas’ outdoor economy.
“Arkansas’ natural beauty is one of our greatest competitive advantages, and places like Blanchard Springs shows why,” Bryan Sanders said in a Monday news release from the governor’s office. “Designating it as a state park will not only protect this incredible place but also open the door to more adventure, exploration, and the kind of outdoor experiences that support families and local communities.”
The redesignation of Blanchard Springs Caverns “is what the Natural State Initiative looks like in action” and hopefully “will make Arkansas a place people want to return to again and again,” Lewis said at the news conference.
Deputy Regional Forester Mary Moore of the U.S. Forest Service praised the agency’s “positive, collaborative” relationship with the state’s parks department.
“The partnership we have is reliable and trustworthy, and our agencies share common goals for the mutual benefit of residents and visitors alike,” Moore said.
Sanders and state Sen. Missy Irvin, a Republican representing Stone County, credited President Donald Trump and U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins with facilitating the process of redesignating Blanchard Springs Caverns.
Sanders thanked leaders of the Caddo, Osage and Quapaw nations of Indigenous communities for being “very helpful in this process.”
The Osage Nation considers Blanchard Springs Caverns a sacred location, and the park’s annual Christmas caroling in the caverns went on hiatus in 2019 due to the tribe’s disapproval.
The event resumed in 2023 after state officials and Osage leaders compromised to allow caroling in an aboveground auditorium instead of the underground Cathedral Room, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported.