Mount Nebo, a flat-topped mountain west of Dardanelle, rises high above the Arkansas River valley and overlooks Lake Dardanelle and surrounding ridges. Springs on a terrace below the summit drew early settlers, though their cabins were largely destroyed during the Civil War. Renamed in the late eighteen sixties, the mountain became a prominent summer resort in the late nineteenth century, with orchards, vineyards, hotels, homes, and boardwalks linking scenic points and mineral springs. After the Summit Park Hotel burned in nineteen eighteen, the resort declined. Arkansas made Mount Nebo its second state park in nineteen twenty-eight, and C.C.C. work in the nineteen thirties created many of the roads, cabins, trails, and pavilions that still shape it.