When Marty Swigart moved to Arkansas from Kansas in 2003, he was getting out of stock-car racing and back into ATV riding. Once he got settled in his new home, he began looking for other ATV people to ride with. He tried the Razorback Riding Club, but it turned out they were a motorcycle-only club.
A few members of the Northwest Arkansas ATV Riding Club gathered in March for a ride at the Mill Creek Riding Area located near Cass, Arkansas, in the Boston Mountain Ranger District of the Ozark National Forest.Jason Sharp and his Rincon top the bluff while the rest of the club take the low road.From right to left: Mike Swigart, Eric Burns, Cortney Wolf and Dustin Swigart.
Having been a member of the Kansas ATV Association back in the early '90s, Swigart decided to take a stab at starting his own. He made some flyers urging interested riders to contact him, and in October 2003, handed them out at the trailhead of the Mark Twain National Forest. The response wasn't great. In fact, nobody contacted him.
"October is the wrong time to start a club, and I got a little discouraged," Swigart explains.
In February 2004, his phone rang. He picked it up, and Jim Harris was on the other end of the line. He and his son were looking for people to ride with, so the two met and agreed to join forces. They held their first club meeting on March 13, 2004.
"We had 11 people at that first meeting," Swigart says.
"And nine signed up on the spot!" Harris adds.
The organization grew rapidly and now has more than 85 members who meet for monthly meetings and take part in regular rides in the area. The club is based just north of Fayetteville, Arkansas, though its rides take place all over the region, on trails in Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri. Their favorite areas include Mark Twain National Forest, Mill Creek Riding Area, Little Sahara and the Chadwick Riding Area, among others.
Cortney Wolf at Mill Creek Riding Area, which has 42 miles of trail.
"Twice a year, we have a big club ride at Chadwick, Missouri," Swigart says. "Father's Day weekend and Halloween weekend."
"We've got a ton of new places we're going to ride," club secretary Mardella Swigart (Swigart's sister-in-law) adds.
The group gets around, to say the least. One of its big events is the annual D-Day ATV Rodeo, held the second weekend of April at D-Day Adventure Park in northeastern Oklahoma, near Wyandotte. The club hosts dirt drags, a poker run, an ATV rodeo and a mud pit. Every year, the event draws a large group of people and is becoming an increasingly popular regional ATV event.
The Northwest Arkansas ATV Riding Club is no doubt enthusiastic about its events. When asked to name the most popular one, everyone has a different opinion.