Eureka Springs, Arkansas is another favorite spot from our days in Missouri. Located in the heart of the Ozark Mountains in the northwest corner of Arkansas, Eureka Springs is a Victorian town named after the “healing waters” rumored to flow in the area. Local tribes told stories of miraculous healings that had happened after individuals bathed in the water or had it sprinkled over injured or diseased areas of their bodies. Eventually white visitors to the area heard these stories, and when they shared them with folks back home, people began to flock to the area. At one time there were more than 10,000 residents. Those residents lived and did business in hastily built wooden structures. In 1890, after the fourth devastating fire in ten years ravaged the entire downtown, the City Council passed an ordinance outlawing wooden structures and requiring all buildings in the town center have a stone or brick façade so that if there was another fire it would be less likely to spread so quickly from one building to the next. This ordinance is largely responsible for the preservation of the town we see today. Many buildings and homes are literally built into the side of the mountains, using the limestone as their interior wall. The streets are narrow, steep and windy (and prone to giving a GPS fits!), and full of character.
Eureka Springs is home to The Crescent Hotel, whose history includes serving as a world-class hotel for the wealthy, a women’s college, a cancer hospital (for the notorious Dr. Baker who was no doctor at all and sold a fake elixir as a cancer cure and made about $4 million dollars in the process – in the 1930s!), and then back to being an upscale hotel; the Eureka Springs Bath House, where individuals can still pay for a bath, but can now add spa treatments to the mix; and The Basin Hotel, where we stayed. It’s a city that is proud to hold onto its heritage (like wall-mounted toilet tanks), and tends to attract individuals with an independent and quirky spirit. Instead of walking all the way down one block and around the corner to get to a building on the street below, you can take any one of a series of stairs located between buildings, and you may find as many as six more businesses built into the side of the hill along the staircase as you make your way down. Sometimes you even find colorful decorations on those stairs!
We encourage you to Google the town or some of the sights we’ve mentioned to learn more about their colorful history. We hope you enjoy the photos.
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