Our Arklahoma Heritage: The "Rotary Ann" rest area on Scenic Highway 7 in Pope County was the state's first

High above the jagged folds of the Ozark Mountains, where Arkansas Highway 7 snakes through dense hardwood forest and open vistas, travelers still pull over at a modest pullout that changed how Arkansans experience their own state.

The Rotary Ann Scenic Overlook and Rest Area--Arkansas’s very first official highway rest stop--sits quietly in Pope County, roughly 25 miles north of Dover and seven miles south of the Newton County line, deep in the Ozark National Forest.

Today, it offers restrooms, picnic tables, interpretive panels, and rail-guarded viewing platforms that frame sweeping sunsets over layered ridges. But in the 1930s, when the road was still a gravel-and-mud challenge, a group of determined women from the Russellville Rotary Club saw a need and turned a simple idea into a statewide legacy.

The story begins not with engineers or politicians, but with the “Rotary Anns”-- the wives of local Rotarians who formed the club’s ladies auxiliary. The nickname itself had national roots:

Ann and Henry Brunnier

in 1914, on a train carrying Rotarians to a convention in Houston, Mrs. Ann Brunnier of San Francisco (traveling with her husband) was playfully dubbed “the Rotarian’s Ann.”

Another Ann (Mrs. Gundaker) earned the same affectionate title on the same trip. The name stuck, and by the 1920s and ’30s Rotary auxiliaries across the country proudly called themselves Rotary Anns until the practice faded in the 1980s.

In Russellville, the local Rotary Anns had a more practical mission. Highway 7, first shown on state maps in 1924 and officially designated State Highway 7 in 1926, had evolved from pioneer trails and mule-dug paths into a vital but punishing north-south artery. Gravel surfaced much of it; rain turned stretches into quagmires. Motor travel was growing, yet there were no public facilities for drivers to stop, relieve themselves, or simply admire the scenery.

The Anns, many of whom had visited other states with emerging roadside parks, recognized the gap. They envisioned a safe, sanitary pullout where families could picnic and travelers could drink in the Ozarks’ beauty.

Working hand-in-hand with their husbands’ Russellville Rotary Club, the women lobbied the Arkansas Highway Department and the U.S. Forest Service (whose land the site occupied).

Their persistence paid off in the 1930s. A scenic overlook with parking was carved into the mountainside along Highway 7. It was modest by today’s standards--no grand pavilion, just a practical roadside haven with basic amenities--but it was revolutionary. Rotary Ann became Arkansas’s first designated highway rest area and the inaugural scenic overlook on wh

at would later be celebrated as the state’s premier scenic byway.

The name “Rotary Ann” honored the women whose vision made it possible.

Highway 7 itself was already weaving its own legend through Pope County. It entered the county at Dardanelle, crossed the Arkansas River, passed through Russellville , and continued north past the old county-seat town of Dover, where Pope County’s early courthouse once stood before the seat moved to Russellville in the late 19th century.

By 1936 most of the route was improved enough for regular traffic. The road’s rugged beauty, rolling from coastal plains through pine hills and into the Ozarks, made it a natural draw even before official scenic status.

In 1993 the stretch from Arkadelphia to Harrison earned Arkansas’s first Scenic Byway designation; the full route to the Louisiana line was added in 1999. Portions through the Ouachita and Ozark National Forests also carry National Forest Scenic Byway honors. For Pope County, the byway has been an economic lifeline.

Motorcyclists, families, Boy and Girl Scout troops, and out-of-state road-trippers have poured through for decades, stopping at Rotary Ann to stretch their legs and snap photos of the “Grand Canyon of the Ozarks” vistas. Local businesses in Russellville, Dover, and nearby communities--from diners to motels--owe much of their seasonal traffic to the byway’s allure. E

ven as newer interstates and U.S. 65 siphoned some travelers in the late 20th century, Rotary Ann remaned a faithful waypoint, its parking lot still busy with license plates from across the country.t

The overlook has endured and evolved. A major renovation in 2004 added modern restrooms, upgraded parking for cars and buses, and interpretive signs that tell the story of the land and the road. More recent reconstruction work has kept the site welcoming for another generation.

Yet the spirit remains unchanged: a community-driven gift that invited the public to pause and appreciate Arkansas’s natural grandeur.

Today, when you stand at Rotary Ann and watch the late-afternoon light paint the mountains gold, you’re participating in a tradition that began with a handful of Rotary wives who refused to let travelers rush blindly past one of the state’s most beautiful stretches.

In an era of interstates and apps, the overlook reminds us that the best journeys still include time to stop, breathe, and look out over the hills. For Pope County--and for every Arkansan who has ever needed a moment on the road--Rotary Ann isn’t just the first rest stop.

It’s the one that showed the way.