Silver Dollar City, a New Fayetteville School and a Chairlift for Bikes

Three things worth knowing this month: Silver Dollar City took the top spot in USA Today's readers' poll again, Fayetteville finally cleared the way for a new Ramay Junior High, and Arkansas got its first chairlift-served bike park. Two of the three are inside Northwest Arkansas. The first one is worth the drive.

1. Silver Dollar City Is Voted the Best Theme Park in America Again

Silver Dollar City in Branson, Missouri was named America's number one theme park in USA Today's 10Best Readers' Choice Awards — its fifth win overall and its fourth consecutive year at the top, having also taken the title once before that streak began. That is a public vote rather than an industry panel, and it beat Disney, Universal, SeaWorld and Six Flags.

I did not know this until recently, and I have been advocating for the place for years on instinct. It is nice to find out the instinct was widely shared.

I do want to correct something I have said. I have described Silver Dollar City as costing a quarter or even a sixteenth of Disney pricing. That is not right. Silver Dollar City single-day tickets run about $89 regular, with promotional dates as low as $65 to $69. Walt Disney World single-day tickets run roughly $119 on the cheapest dates up to $209 at peak. So call it half to a third of Disney, which is still a substantial difference but nowhere near a sixteenth.

What holds up is everything else. The park is clean. The rides are good. They re-theme it every season — fall, Christmas, Halloween, summer — and the Christmas version in particular is worth planning around. It does not have Epcot, because that is Disney's universe and a different proposition entirely. But I would take it over Six Flags on any day of the year.

It is about 88 miles from Bentonville, roughly two hours by car — close enough to be a weekend rather than a trip.

2. Ramay Junior High Clears Its Last Hurdle in Fayetteville

Fayetteville Public Schools is building an entirely new Ramay Junior High campus near College Avenue and Poplar Street — about 150,000 square feet, plus a track and parking.

It took a while, and the back-and-forth was real. The City Council approved rezoning 5-3 in December 2025. The Planning Commission approved the development plan 8-0 on April 13, 2026. A resident appeal went back to the City Council, which denied it 7-1 on May 20, 2026.

Total projected cost is around $103 million, down from an initial estimate closer to $115 million. The school board approved about $7.05 million in early site work in April 2026. Target completion is the 2028-29 school year.

Bella Vista gets most of the growth headlines, and Fayetteville quietly keeps needing more school capacity. I have said Fayetteville is growing by leaps and bounds — I cannot put a sourced enrollment figure behind that phrase, so take it as impression rather than data. What is not impression is a $103 million junior high. Districts do not spend that without a reason.

3. Arkansas Gets Its First Chairlift-Served Bike Park

The OZ Trails Bike Park opened in Bella Vista on June 12, 2026, timed to Bentonville Bike Fest, with the governor on hand and a flyover.

A Leitner-Poma high-speed quad moves about 1,000 riders an hour up a 200-acre site with more than 20 miles of gravity trails. Founding memberships ran $99 a month individual and $199 family, locked for two years, and founding members got in on May 15, about four weeks ahead of the public.

Lift-served bike parks are not everywhere. Directory tallies put the U.S. count around 120, and they cluster in Colorado, California and Vermont — mountain and ski country. Having one in the Ozarks is genuinely unusual.

The practical effect: half the work of mountain biking is getting back up the hill. That is great exercise and it is also the reason a lot of people do two runs instead of eight. Take the climb out and the sport becomes something different.

Two things I have speculated about that are not confirmed. I have said this is where Olympic mountain bikers will train ahead of the next Games — that is an assumption; what is actually confirmed is that Bentonville has been the home of the U.S. National Mountain Bike Team since December 2022. And I have said a downtown Bella Vista development will follow shortly after the bike park. Nothing has been formally announced. Blue Crane, the Waltons' real estate arm, does control roughly 2,700 acres and most of the developer rights in the city, so the capacity is there — but the plan is my guess, not news.