Fair Park Swimming Pool
An old postcard, dated 1948, showing the Fair Park Swimming Pool
Thanks to Gilbert Cohen (Hall High School, Class of '60), Here's the pool from the early 1950s
Note that in the top picture the diving platform is of wood construction. By the early fifties the platform was made of steel. In the middle of the summer you could burn your feet climbing the steel steps or on the top steel platform. And it was not uncommon for sombody to climb to the top platform, look around, then climb back down. Did that a few times myself.
The boards, if I recall correctly, were one, two, and three meters, and the platforms were five and eight meters. There were three boards on each side of the platforms.
Harold Higgins (LRCHS, '61) adds:
The top platform was the 8-meter platform and was only open when the one below it,
the 5-meter platform, was closed. The lifeguards used to close the 5-meter for
a while each day so adventurous divers (you had to dive off the 8-meter, no jumping allowed)
could get their time in. Sometimes, there were not many takers.
One reason was that when you were up there either on the 5-meter or 8-meter, you were
looking down thru clear water and seeing the black lines on the bottom of the pool
which made it appear even higher.
In the early 1950's, we that grew up on the East side of Little Rock caught the Airport bus at 9th and Byrd, across from Tedford's Drug Store and transferred to the War Memorial or Fair Park bus at 5th and Main. We would spend the day at the pool and then ride the bus back home.