Akers Ferry Canoe Rental is now owned and operated by the Blackwell family who have been a Concessioner of the Ozark National Scenic Riverways at Jadwin Canoe Rental since 1973. Jan. of 2023 marked the 50 year anniversary since Darrel and Shelia Blackwell purchased Jadwin Canoe Rental and became a concessioner for the National Park Service (NPS).
Akers Ferry Canoe Rental has roots at Akers Ferry dating back to the mid-1800’s. The rental office is located at Akers on Current River, 16.7 miles from its source at Montauk State Park and 23 miles from Salem.
“It needed somebody to operate it,” said Darrel Blackwell on the purchase of Akers Ferry Canoe Rental. “And we happened to be in the right place at the right time, and we purchased it from the Maggard family.”
Operations for Akers Ferry Canoe Rental are going to be done out of the office space next to the ranger station at the entrance of the parking lot.
Blackwell shared that satellite communications, telephones, and internet are all up and running at the office as of April 24. He’s hoping to have everything ready to go to get the office manned and operations started by May 1. Akers Ferry Canoe Rental’s manager will be Scott Blackwell, and the assistant manager will be Brad Blackwell, both sons of Darrel and Shelia.
“It’s a process, of course, to get everything that you need to operate a business like that,” said Darrel. “Which is not a real problem for us because we have been doing it for over 50 years.”
Blackwell shared further that his family have been operating the Akers Ferry Canoe Rental since last year, and now it’s officially under contract.
Services provided by Akers Ferry Canoe Rental will remain the same as they’ve always been – rentals for canoes, kayaks, rafts, tubes, tandem kayaks, the whole works. As for hours, those will be from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. until around Memorial Day weekend, the start of summer, when hours will be 7:30 a.m. to 7 p.m.
“If it can’t be in the Maggard family,” said Judy Stewart, daughter of Buck Maggard, the original owner of Akers Ferry Canoe Rental. “Then it must be in the Blackwell family. Because Darrel and I are cousins—my grandfather and Darrel’s grandfather were brothers.”
Stewart shared her family’s history with the ferry, Akers Ferry Canoe Rental, and Akers.
Stewart shared that her mother’s side of the family, the Purcell’s, made their living on the river in the mid-1800s running the country store that provided all the needs of the families that lived alongside it. The little store was the hub of the community, with her grandfather as the barber and the postmaster. Her grandfather asked Stewart’s mother to come home and take over the family business, and so she did.
There soon after, her father built the Akers Ferry Canoe Rental store on the bank, and it still exists to this day. In 1954, her father started renting canoes to tourists, said Stewart. He kept buying canoes to rent and built the campground in the field across from the store – she shared it was a beautiful campground back then, and her father frequently found arrowheads when he plowed the field. He ran quite the tourism business, said Stewart.
As for Akers Ferry, Arnold Smith was the Maggard family’s neighbor in the early 40s. He was the builder of the ferry, and it opened up the community’s world. It wasn’t until after Stewart was born in the 50s that her father took over the business of operating it. When Stewart was growing up, the family all ran the ferry – even she had a turn operating it. The Maggard family operated the ferry for 70 years.
“My dad said he could never sit down for dinner without someone ringing the ferry,” recalled Stewart.
To see a display of all the ferry boats up and down the Current River, one just needs to go to the Shannon County Museum. Buck Maggard, said Stewart, is right in the middle of all of them, alongside Akers Ferry.
Stewart is driven to preserve what they have left within Ozark National Scenic Riverways. She’s now president of the Shannon County Museum Association and is working to help preserve the Mount Zion Church at Akers.
