Pittsburg man recalls lifetime at park

PITTSBURG, Kan. — Jack Overman, 93, has spent his life fishing and camping at Roaring River State Park.

He can describe the primitive screened-in sleeping porches, long since torn down.

“They were on stilts all in a row, on the west side of the river right next to Superintendent (Hugh) Brixey’s house,” Overman said.

He can describe early camping.

“We didn’t have designated campgrounds, but just pulled our old 1930 Dodge right up to the banks, where the playground and picnic tables are now,” he said. “You could roll out of bed in the morning and just start fishing.”

The park officially opened in 1932. Overman, who was born in 1919, has been there since the beginning.

He can recall his summers as a young boy watching Civilian Conservation Corps crews build the iconic lodge and hatchery, both of which still stand.

His memories aren’t surprising, since he’s fished there every summer since 1931.

That’s 80 summers — some years he spent as many as 65 days at Roaring River — of casting flies and visiting the hatchery and making camp within a stone’s throw of the baffles that earned the river its name. He and his wife even spent their honeymoon in the park.

Although the sleeping porches are gone, a lake has been built and destroyed, and anglers arrive via four-wheel-drive SUVs today, the park is a place where time stands still, Overman said.

Those anglers still vie for the best position at the park office in order to get the coveted “0001” trout tag on opening day of the season.

Overman lucked out and got one on March 1, 2007 — and counts it as one of his prized possessions.

“I had an ‘in’,” he grinned as he showed it off. “I was the one who got to shoot the gun on Opening Day that year, and they gave it to me.”

Today, as can be seen in photos dating to the early 1930s, children still pose for photographs with stringers full of fish.

Overman used to pose for such photos himself, on fishing trips with his father, John, mother, Jessie, and little brother Don.

“Except at that time, there was no limit, and then I think they made the limit 10,” he said. Today, it’s four.

“Dad and I would haul home 100 fish after two-week trips, and store them in the ice plant over on Sixth Street.”

In later decades, Overman would snap photos of his own two children, Sandy Hale and Steve Overman, taken on countless fishing trips he and his late wife, Doris, took with them.

And, today, thousands of campers and anglers still pour into the park for the catch-and-keep season, which begins Thursday.

“When we entered the park for the first time, it was just an old gravel road that came in behind the hatchery from the north,” Overman recalled. “Highway 112 hadn’t been built yet.”

There were just five baffles then, terminating in a man-made lake near today’s cleaning station.

When his family said goodbye to the park for another year, they left driving backward as all visitors did — it’s the only way cars of that day could garner enough power to get up the steep hill that led in and out of the park.

Today, Overman worries about the future of the park because of a declining aqueduct and the possibility of pollution, and has been active in signing petitions to prevent poultry farms from setting up shop too close to the park.

Despite having been to every national park in the United States, from the Grand Tetons to Yellowstone to Glacier, he maintains his favorite spot on Earth is at Roaring River State Park.

“I could sit there and look at that mountain ... walk that stream, for hours and hours and hours. It has always been, and remains today, the most peaceful place in the world,” he said.

Enough to make it his final resting place?

“Sure,” he said. “That’s my favorite place.”

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Pittsburg man recalls lifetime at park