Petit Jean State Park sits atop Petit Jean Mountain in Conway County, wedged between the Ouachita Mountains and the Ozark Plateaus, overlooking the Arkansas River. It was established in 1923 as Arkansas's first state park, but the park visitors see today was largely built in the 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps. CCC crews constructed roads, buildings, trails, and the dams that impound Lake Bailey and Roosevelt Lake. Their work defines the park's character: log-and-stone structures in the Rustic style scattered through the forest, including four original cabins built around 1935. Cabin number 6 has a shed-roof porch with views into the canyon. Cabin number 9 still has its original stone masonry cooking pit nearby. The main administration building, also from 1935, now serves partly as a gift shop. Even the park's original water treatment building, a square stone structure tucked away from tourist facilities, was built in the Rustic style. Many of these structures are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Cedar Creek carved the deep forested canyon that gives Petit Jean its dramatic setting. The creek cascades over a ledge into the canyon in an impressive waterfall known as Cedar Falls. Above the falls, Cedar Creek has been dammed to create Lake Bailey, a calm body of water used for pedal-boating and fishing. The CCC-built Cedar Falls Trail descends from Mather Lodge into the canyon, crossing Cedar Creek on a handsome stone bridge. Mather Lodge itself, a 24-room historic lodge, perches on the edge of a bluff overlooking the canyon -- one of the most photographed settings in the Arkansas state park system. In addition to the lodge, the park offers 32 cabins and 127 campsites. In 2017, Petit Jean was rated the best campsite in Arkansas in a 50-state survey.

The mountain's geology provides as much to explore as its human history. Bear Cave, Rock House Cave, the Grotto, Turtle Rocks, Carpet Rocks, and Natural Bridge are scattered across the park, each a product of the sandstone and shale formations that make up Petit Jean Mountain. Rock House Cave contains archaeological evidence of ancient human habitation -- the mountain has attracted people for far longer than the legend of the French cabin boy suggests. The scenic overlook at Petit Jean's grave provides a panoramic view of the Arkansas River Valley, with the river itself visible winding through the lowlands far below. Less than a mile from the main camping areas sits the Museum of Automobiles, an unexpected attraction that houses a collection of vintage cars on the mountaintop. The park also contains a now-disused pedestrian bridge built of concrete sculpted to resemble logs, a cruder cousin of the faux-bois work of artist Dionicio Rodriguez found elsewhere in Arkansas.

The CCC's engineering at Petit Jean went well beyond cabin construction. The Blue Hole Road, which now forms part of the Boy Scout Trail, originally provided vehicular access from the Red Bluff loop road down to the Blue Hole swimming area. Its surviving culverts, retaining walls, and guard rails testify to the care these Depression-era crews brought to their work. Two CCC-built road structures remain in active vehicular use: a stone box culvert underlying Highway 154, the park's main access road, and the Cedar Creek Bridge, which carries Red Bluff Drive over Cedar Creek just below the outlet of Lake Roosevelt. These structures have carried traffic for nearly a century without replacement. The park sits in a transitional zone between the Ouachita Mountains to the south and the Ozark Plateaus to the north, a geological meeting point that gives the mountain its unusual flat-topped profile. From the overlook, on a clear day, the view stretches across the river valley to the horizon -- the same vista that the young woman called Little John supposedly saw in her final days, a landscape that has been drawing people to this mountain ever since.