Engines were revving and mud was flying last Saturday morning as riders of a variety of off-highway vehicles including dirtbikes, ATVs, and side-by-side UTVs christened the new and improved Nicholson-Ford OHV Park located near the eastern city limits of Marshalltown on Marion Street.

Much like the long and winding path the riders traversed at the 100-acre park, the journey to getting it back up to snuff after the 2020 derecho left it in shambles hasn’t been an easy one. But for members of the Iowa River OHV Club like secretary Brian Arrowood who have been heavily involved in the rebuilding process, the soft opening last weekend represented a major milestone.

“After the derecho went through, it was like climbing through a jungle gym as a kid. There were logs and trees leaning on each other, just nasty,” Arrowood said.

Although Nicholson-Ford is technically a city park, it didn’t qualify for Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) dollars, but the Iowa River OHV Club was able to secure Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR) grant money to help. In all, Arrowood estimated the cost of the entire project was somewhere between $200,000 and $225,000.

Initially, the club members thought they could handle the work themselves, but they quickly realized it was a taller task than they expected.

“We traipsed in there with chainsaws thinking we were gonna put a dent in it,” Arrowood said. “We kind of wanted to see what it would be like, and after an hour, with three or four guys, we hadn’t even gotten 20 feet into the timber and realized how much dangerous stuff was over our heads. If you cut the wrong one down first, the whole pile’s coming down on you. We decided we’d better back up and get some experts, and that’s when we started looking into funding and stuff.”

Mitchell Logging of Green Mountain was the low bidder and got the contract to clear the timber, and Arrowood said the company did great work over a period of about a year, even salvaging some of the wood to sell despite most of it being “junk,” in Arrowood’s words.

Now that the park is back up and running, one of Arrowood’s goals going forward is to beef up the club’s membership, which has dwindled down to about 12 from a peak of 100 in past decades. With at least 30 to 40 riders and spectators in attendance last Saturday, he hopes that’s a harbinger of good things to come.

“That was awesome. It was great to see people out there checking it out,” he said. “Most of them were happy to see it open because they’ve been kind of watching this through the whole process, and it’s good to see we’ve got a place to ride that’s not two hours away.”

Nicholson-Ford is open during daylight hours and is located at 2814 E. Marion St. Vehicles must be registered with the county recorder, and helmets are required. There are also restrictions on the size of the machines, which are meant to keep Jeeps from venturing in and getting stuck.

While nothing is set in stone, Arrowood anticipates a few more workdays to improve the park, welcoming members from other clubs around the state to visit and potentially holding some sort of a scavenger hunt ride in the future.

“Right now, we’re pretty much gonna run where we’re at until the frost kills the grass off and then we can get in there and take care of more log piles,” he said.

Anyone interested in learning more can visit the Iowa River Offroad Club Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/groups/172211239504877/. Information about each of Iowa’s OHV parks can be found at https://www.iowadnr.gov/Things-to-Do/Off-Highway-Vehicles.

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Contact Robert Maharry at 641-753-6611 or

rmaharry@timesrepublican.com.