Ponca and its park are perking up

PONCA, Neb. — Ponca State Park's sleepy years are a fading dream, and now the bedroom community down the hill is shaking off its slumber, too.

Ponca, a community of about 1,100 people, is the gateway for nearly 700,000 people visiting the state park each year. Most of those visits happen during spring, summer and fall.

Nearly 20 years and about $30 million worth of improvements later — paid for by a combination of private donations, grants, state and federal funds and sweat equity — the park is poised to boom, and the town is eager to make some noise of its own.

The reinvigorated state park, with its lodge-like visitor center and many more soon-to-open mini-lodges, is expected to drive visitor counts to historic highs — more overnight stays for more of the year from a wider radius that could include Omaha, Sioux Falls, S.D., and Le Mars, Iowa.

“It's a great opportunity for the people here,” said Jim Swenson, the State Game and Parks Commission's eastern Nebraska parks manager. “People travel not just from eastern Nebraska to Ponca State Park, but they cross the Missouri River from Iowa and South Dakota — and to get here they have to pass through the community of Ponca.”

The park's transformation from an often overlooked and little-known woodland situated atop Missouri River bluffs in northeastern Nebraska started during the depths of the 1980s farm crisis, said John Kingsbury, president of the Bank of Dixon County and the Better Ponca Foundation.

“The handwriting was on the wall,” he said. “How could we save Main Street? What could we do to maintain school enrollment?”

Ponca is Nebraska's fourth-oldest town. It dates to 1856. The 2,166-acre state park is Nebraska's second-oldest. It was established with 200 donated acres in 1934.

Kingsbury said the community and the park needed to reinvent themselves.

“We decided to build on our two strengths,” he said.

One asset was the state park and its status as the eastern end of a new national park, the Missouri National Recreational River. Planners sensed a growing need for places to teach increasingly urbanized Nebraskans and others about the outdoors.

The other strength was proximity to South Sioux City, Neb., and Sioux City, Iowa. Ponca is 24 miles northwest of Sioux City and 115 miles north of Omaha.

“We decided not to fight being a bedroom community,” Kingsbury said. “We decided to become the best bedroom community, and we could do that by offering a quality of life centered on outdoor recreation.”

Boosters started by building a nine-hole golf course on the edge of the state park with 100 percent local funding and labor. It opened in 1995.

“People started paying attention at that point,” Kingsbury said.

Eight years later came a 17,000-square-foot park visitor center, known as the Missouri National Recreational River Resource and Education Center. National Park Service exhibits fill one wing, a University of South Dakota laboratory and classroom and public meeting rooms are in others. The center overlooks one of the few unchannelized, natural stretches remaining on the Missouri River.

The park has 14 modernized log cabins that date to the 1930s, but they aren't usable in winter. The first of an eventual 17 new cabins — most large enough to accommodate large family reunion groups and usable year-round — opened two years ago. A dozen of the four-season mini-lodges are in the final stages of construction and will be available for rent in coming months.

The park already is ranked as one of the nation's best places to watch birds, hike, canoe and learn about the outdoors. The park's annual Missouri River Outdoor Expo attracted nearly 45,000 people one weekend last September, including nearly 500 students from 16 schools. Families came from eight states.

“Overnight, year-round lodging was the missing element, and now we've got that,” Kingsbury said. “Communities can't prosper with a Labor Day to Memorial Day season or one-day events.”

The mini-lodges will inject about 150 new people — in addition to campers — into the park and community on any given night, said Jeff Fields, park superintendent. Demand is strong for the five mini-lodges already available.

Richard Baier, director of the Nebraska Economic Development Department, said Ponca's success stems from the community working together.

“Many times, unfortunately, different groups will pull in different directions,” he said. “This town had a common goal. They made the park a leader. It will attract visitors for years to come.”

Ponca, meanwhile, is perking up itself.

About 40 houses have been built between the town and the park in recent years. Five are under construction this summer. Price tags of $300,000 are not uncommon, Kingsbury said. A new junior and senior high school building is under construction in Ponca. Voters approved a $9.52 million school bond issue last year. School enrollment appears to have stabilized at about 440 students. The town's water system is being upgraded.

Swenson, the regional parks manager, said Ponca State Park's growth and popular activities are possible only because of the support of hundreds of volunteers, many of them from Ponca.

“We're fortunate to be situated next to such a generous community,” he said.

Kingsbury said the only discouraging thing is the amount of time and money required for community and natural resources development.

“The best you can do is have continual achievement — take steps along way,” he said. “There are no quick fixes.”

Contact the writer:

444-1127, david.hendee@owh.com

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