The City That Water Built

5-9 May 2022

Harding Spring

Eureka Springs is known as The City That Water Built. It's a small town, only about 2400 residents, but there is so much history and things to do here it really surprised me. I think this was my favorite place I visited in Arkansas.

Of course, it was raining when I arrived, it’s springtime in Arkansas! I stayed at another COE campground, Dam Site River, just outside ES. It had been raining a lot and some of the roads and campsites were flooded but mine was sloped just enough that the water ran off of it. The dam was releasing water so the river was flooded too. Most COE campgrounds have electric and water hookups but this one only has electric.

So much water! They had the release gates going full blast. These 3 ladies were fishing at the boat launch. Notice the Danger sign (red) is barely showing above the flood waters.

What a difference a few sunny days make. The dam is still releasing water but the river level went way down. It had been up to the second debris line at the boat launch and you can read the sign now.

First on the agenda was Thorncrown Chapel. It‘s a gorgeous glass chapel built in the woods on a mountainside.

It was designed by E. Fay Jones, who was an apprentice of Frank Lloyd Wright, and opened in July 1980. It stands 48 feet tall and has 425 windows.

A cross adorns every light in the chapel. In the daytime, you don't really notice them but the darker it gets the more visible they become. When it's darkest, it appears there are three rows of crosses on either side of the chapel. No one knows why the reflections stop at three.

The brochure they give you states “Most church buildings portray separateness. They contain few windows. Others obscure the outside world with stained glass. In our sanctuaries we retreat to a holy place to be with God. When we finish, we go out into a world we think isn't so sacred. Yet when you enter Thorncrown, there is nothing but windows. There is little distinction between the outside and the inside. It softly proclaims all of creation is a cathedral, and every moment of your life is holy. Nothing is ordinary or forsaken.” Wow! That really touched my heart and brought tears to my eyes.

My next stop was the ES Historical Museum so I could learn a little history about the town. The museum is housed in what was originally the Calif House built in 1889 and has an interesting story itself.

Calif House and Spring

The Calif family had a dry goods store and their residence on the ground level, and rooms rented to boarders on the second and third floors. When Samuel Calif died in 1901, his widow sold it and moved back to Illinois. It changed hands several times before the it became the Lodge for the Benevolent and Protective Order of the Elks in 1948. Since the Elks Lodge was a private club, it was the only place in town where one could order mixed drinks or hard liquor. The bars at that time could only serve beer. The Lodge operated as a private night club, and meeting rooms were located upstairs along with a poker room. There were also reportedly slot machines and roulette tables. In 1971 the Elks sold Calif House to the Eureka Springs Ozark Folk Festival who over the next 10 years, restored it back to its original design. The museum opened in 1980.

Below you can read the story of how the city came to be.

They had some interesting items in the museum. I'd never heard of this perm machine before. Can you imagine?! And I thought chemical perms were bad! Ozarka water originated in Eureka Springs.

Eureka Springs is a rather quirky town. It only has maybe two or three chain restaurants and the rest of the businesses are mom and pop shops. They have a large artist community so there's art everywhere.

Sculpture at Basin Spring Park, painted staircase between buildings

Mural depicting the first 100 years of the city

New York isn't the only city to have a Flatiron building. As you can see the streets are steep and narrow. They were made for wagons not automobiles. Thankfully there is a trolley system you can take and hop on and off all day for only $6, or $10 for a 2-day pass. Well worth not having to fight for a parking spot. As big as my truck is there's no way I could find a place to park.

Of course, what the city is famous for is the springs. There are over 60 of them around the area. Here are just a few.

Basin Spring - where it all began

Grotto Spring - you can go inside the cave

Sweet Spring - the water supposedly has a sweet flavor

The springs are all closed for drinking but the gardens they've built around them are just lovely little respites to sit and reflect.

The side of this building is the original painting. They call it a "ghost mural" because of the fading. I thought it was beautiful but there's another reason I took this picture. In the next photo you can see the name of the business that is in this building.

Fain's Herbacy! My maiden name is Fain and there's not a lot of us, so I knew the owner was probably a very distant cousin. Dr Jim Fain, PhD has a degree in Nuclear Medicine and also practiced psychotherapy for a number of years. He has developed his own line of naturopathic supplements and sells them along with many other things in his store and online.

I had so much fun talking genealogy with him. He knows he's descended from my 6th great grandfather, Nicholas Fain but he's not sure which of Nicholas' children he comes from. I'm going to do some research and see if I can figure it out. He was such a sweet man and I look forward to keeping in touch with him.

Next up is the Crescent Hotel. It bills itself as the most haunted hotel in America. Opened in 1886, it was designed by St Louis World's Fair architect Isaac Taylor. It hasn't always been a hotel. In 1908, to help keep the hotel full during the off season (September - May), the owners opened the Crescent College & Conservatory for Young Women. Both the hotel and college closed in 1934 due to the Depression.

The back of the Crescent Hotel, which is used as the front entrance now because it's at street level.

Isn't this fireplace in the lobby incredible?

The front of the hotel. The wagons would bring customers up from the railway to this grand entrance.

In 1937, Norman Baker, a former vaudeville magician, purchased the hotel and opened Baker's Cancer Curing Hospital. He was a charlatan and treated his clients with an elixir that was found to be made of watermelon seed, corn silk, clover, water and carbolic acid. Knowing the effectiveness of props, he even displayed bottles of his elixir as well as human tissues removed from patients who had died in the morgue. After two years, the law caught up with him. They didn't arrest him for impersonating a doctor; they got him for seven counts of mail fraud. He used the US Postal Service to mail brochures advertising his treatment center. He was sentenced to 4 years in Leavenworth, which he served. He retired in Florida and in a cruel twist of fate, or maybe karma, he died of...wait for it...cancer.

In the 1960s, the new owners decided to bury Baker's bottles. In 2019 the site was accidentally uncovered and became an official archeological dig. They uncovered more than 500 bottles. It is said that many of the ghosts that inhabit the Crescent are those patients that died under Baker's care. The hotel has ghost tours every night that include the morgue where some of these bottles are once again on display.

That afternoon I took the tram tour of the historic district to see the old Victorian homes.

This is the oldest home in town. It's been modified several times and doesn't resemble what it originally looked like but it's still beautiful

I just liked the looks of this one.

Some of the beautiful blooms - Clematis, Columbine and Iris - all in my favorite color!

The Palace Hotel and Bathhouse is the only bathhouse left in the town.

This used to be a gas station. It's hard to see but the door handle on the side door is the old gas pump.

The next day I headed out of downtown to see some of the other attractions. First up was the Christ of the Ozarks. The Great Passion Play is a complex that not only houses the reenactment of the story of Jesus' life, death and resurrection, but also has the Christ of the Ozarks statue, a 10' x 10' section of the Berlin Wall, Bible Museum, Noah's ark petting zoo and even mountain bike trails. The play starts Memorial weekend and runs on select nights through the last weekend of October.

Christ of the Ozarks is a 67 foot tall statue that has a 65 foot arm span. His face is 15 feet tall and the entire statue weighs 2 million pounds!

This is a genuine 10' x 10' section of the Berlin Wall that fell 9 November 1989.

Painted on the wall in German are these words from the 23rd Psalm. "Though I walk through the dark valley, I will not fear." The Great Passion Play acquired this piece as a tribute to the spirit of all people who risk their lives to believe and practice their Christian faith.

From there I visited Quigley's Castle. It's a unique home that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It was built in the 1940s by Elise and Albert Quigley. As a girl, Elise loved the outdoors and collected rocks from the creek bed near her home. She used these rocks as well as a collection of fossils, crystals and arrowheads to cover the outside walls of the house.

Mrs Quigley wanted a "home where I felt like I was living in the world instead of in a box". To bring nature indoors, she left four feet of earth bare between the edges of the living spaces and the walls. She planted flowering, tropical plants that grow up to the second story ceiling and are over 65 years old now.

She used shells she collected to decorate and had an aquarium built into the wall

The butterfly wall in the master bedroom was Elise's last big project. It is a collection of butterflies and moths found in her gardens and set in polyester rosin. She finished it when she was 68 years old.

One of the over 100 rock sculptures she created in the gardens

Rock sculptures with bottle trees, pond

Just up the road from Quigley's Castle is Turpentine Creek Wildlife Refuge. They take in animals that were abused, neglected or abandoned, rehabilitate them and care for them for the rest of their lives. They take in not only lion and tigers, but ligers, bears, cougars, bobcats, leopards and many other cats. It is a true sanctuary, meaning they don't allow the public to have hands-on interaction with the animals and they don't breed them either.

This is Bam Bam, the resident grizzly bear. He enjoys swimming in his own pool.

I didn't take a lot of pictures here because most of the cats were either far away or sleeping. You take a tram ride around the park where they tell you about the different cats. There are even a few here from Tiger King's ranch.

White Tiger

Lastly, is the Beaver Bridge, a/k/a the "Little Golden Gate of Arkansas". Completed in 1949, the one lane suspension bridge that crosses the White River. It spans 554 feet but is only 11 feet wide. You can see how high the water is from all the rain. It's about 10 feet above flood stage.

As you can see it has a wooden deck which is replaced about every 20 years. Beaver Bridge is located on Highway 187 near Beaver. It's the only suspension bridge still open to traffic in the state and is on the National Register of Historical Places. It's estimated the bridge sees about 650 cars cross a day. I was at least 4 of these! It's just such a cool and picturesque little bridge.

Hope you enjoyed this edition. Next time I wrap up my time in Arkansas and head back to Texas.