Peel, AR

Peel: A Ferry Ride Back in Time...

Peel, Ark., native Robert Blair recalls a not-so-distant time when he could stand on his parents’ front porch and survey all of the surrounding kingdom—four houses, at the time—without craning his neck.

“Dad liked to brag that he walked out of town and back each night after dinner,” quips Blair. No longer.

Although still a far stretch from a metropolis, for the last few years Peel’s population has grown and spread closer to the town’s literal and figurative “end of the road”: the abrupt Highway 125 drop-off that leads motorists straight out of Peel to the edge of the area’s popular 45,000-acre bass fishing lake known as Bull Shoals.

It isn’t the only route to Bull Shoals. The lake’s serpentine course slithers across both Arkansas and Missouri, and 19 local, state, and federal parks trawl its 1,000-acre shoreline. But Peel’s “jumping-off” point has a few distinct advantages. For one thing, it’s the site of the only remaining car ferry in Arkansas.

While modern-day bridges have suspended the operation of similar state-run ferries in places like Toad Suck, Moro Bay, and Spring Bank, the Peel Ferry just keeps on chugging. Day in and day out, the tug-powered barge transports passengers back in time—and across state lines—with the precision of a finely calibrated pocket watch. For 10 leisurely (and drive-free) minutes, passengers ferried from Arkansas to Missouri—or Missouri to Arkansas—can sit back and saturate themselves in seasonal scenery: the spring’s green cedars backdropped against rugged limestone bluffs; the flaming landscape of autumn’s hardwoods; the perennial blue of the mammoth lake.

Joe Shell, who recently returned to the area to help care for his aging father, takes the roundtrip ride from Peel at least twice a week. He says he finds it relaxing. But the ferry also provides him with access to Peel’s nearest store, located on the Missouri side of Bull Shoals.

For some locals, like Blair, the ferry ride is an even more regular occurrence. As a contractor with the U.S. Corps of Engineers, Blair’s job is to patrol the lake’s shoreline by ferrying from one side to the other, ensuring that its boundaries on both sides are clear and well-maintained.

“Robert was just about born on the ferry,” says Bob Sushinsky, a tugboat pilot.

Sushinsky operated a marine towing and salvage business off the Florida coast before trading it in—along with the 45-foot sailboat he and his wife lived on—for a small quarter horse farm in the nearby Arkansas Ozarks. And, although officially “retired,” the tugboat captain—one of several the Arkansas State Highway and Transportation Department employs to pilot Peel Ferry—keeps his sea legs worthy by steering car-laden barges back and forth across Bull Shoals three times a week.

In the high season spring and summer months, a string of tourists (six cars at a time) line up for the eight-tenths-of-a-mile Peel Ferry ride during daylight hours.

“Those are long days,” Sushinsky adds, noting that summer days easily extend to 14 hours of sunlight.

A relative newcomer, Sushinsky has yet to experience the crunch season. But he weathered this past winter’s ice storms. “Even in the worst weather, we never missed a beat,” he notes proudly. Deck hand Lloyd Stone—a 19-year employee—adds that he can’t remember a time the ferry has ever “missed a beat.”

Like New York’s Staten Island Ferry, Peel’s version offers travelers a chance to relax and soak up as much local color as possible. There’s no charge. Consider it a bow to the past. Peel’s way of paying homage to the likes of Toad Suck and Moro Bay and Spring Bank.

Or, just sit back and enjoy the ride.

Margaret Dornaus is a regular American Profile contributor.

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