Fourche Creek Information

The "Fourche" in Fourche Creek is pronounced by locals as either "fush", rhyming with push, or as "foosh" rhyming with woosh. Either way is fine. The creek was actually first named by french explorers who noted that the system "forked" just prior to flowing into the Arkansas River. The french word for fork is fourche (f), and thus how the creek got its name.

The Fourche Creek watershed includes six third-order streams and nine primary tributaries. The watershed stretches across the length of the city of Little Rock and includes several large, isolated, urban wetlands. The creek system empties into the Arkansas River just south of downtown Little Rock and immediately below the city’s wastewater treatment facility. There are ten city parks bordering Fourche Creek, or its tributaries, with an estimated 90,000 acres of the watershed within the city limits of Little Rock. Approximately 2,000 acres of the watershed are intact wetlands. These core wetland areas remain undeveloped but are surrounded by encroaching commercial and industrial sites and are criss-crossed by utility corridors.

During a typical storm Fourche Creek's wetlands can store up to one billion gallons of water. The creek, watershed, and wetland areas provide water purification, efficient containment and storage of floodwaters, urban noise reduction, air and water pollution control, and wildlife habitat within the city.

Fourche Creek is home to over 50 species of fish (one fourth of all Arkansas fish species), stands of three hundred year old bald cypress, and a diverse population of migratory bird species.

Want to learn about Fourche Creek? -- click on the links to the left!