Arkansas Vacation - Day 3 - Part 1 Eureka Springs

 Good Morning Eureka Springs!!  WE are ready to explore you and your beautiful area.  The clouds have lifted a bit so hopefully we will have a nice day.  View from our front porch.  We are staying here again tonight, so no need to pack up.

Across the road.  We are about 1/2 mile from the town itself and it seems way more remote than it really is.

As we drove back to the cabin last night, we spotted this, but it was dark then.  Now, I can get a picture.  Things that make you go hmmm.

We have found a spot to park for a couple of hours (not cheap, mind you) and get our first glance of the town before it wakes.  It has similarities to Telluride but it's oh so different.

Into the coffee shop for a hot beverage to carry around while we walk.

As I wait for Mister -- I notice the ceiling.  It is lots of doors hung flat.  How original!!!  Love the idea.

Let's get going.  First - those stairs shown above.  I believe they lead up to the Basin Park Hotel area.  At the top --- the top to the stairway.  Love it.

Right about now, it starts to sprinkle.  The umbrellas are in the car down at the bottom of the stairs.  Decisions, decisions.  We opt to go rogue.  What's a little water, right?  Now, focus on the town and it's architecture.

Basin Park Hotel - Built in 1905 - does it give you an idea of how much of a hill it is build on?

Another view -- yes one street each side of the flatiron style building.

Next to the Basin Park Hotel is Basin Spring Park.

Here is where the Basin Springs can be found.  A placard tells us:  "The earliest visitors to this place in the wilderness that would become Eureka Springs were here in desperate need of better health.  Long known as a healing spring by native Americans, the water was thought to cure all kinds of illness.  Health-seekers flocked here in 1879, arriving on foot, horse-back and in wagons.  These were mostly poor people who had exhausted all other remedies.  They lived in covered wagons, tents and rough shacks.  Days were spent sociably walking from spring to spring with tin cups and water bottles to drink from each.  By the 1890s Eureka Springs was becoming a fine spa resort.  Basin Park had fine hotels on either side.  The Southern Hotel on the south and The Perry House on the north.  After The PerryHouse burned, it was replaced with the Basin Park Hotel in 1905, the last of the big hotels.  Since the 1880s, one of the landmarks of Spring Street has been the Flatiron Building.  This is the fourth one to stand in this spot.  The original wooden structures were destroyed in a series of Great Fires."

It is through a series of stairways that we reach the top and the opening where the springs can be heard still.  They have been "redirected" in later days.

As I turn around -- the view of the town is wonderful.

As we make our way back, a statue at the top and one at the bottom merit mentioning.  The first is the Basin Park Goddess, a 10' mosaic statue of a smiling woman holding a heart in her hands.  The second is the Doughboy Monument, a marble statue atop raised stone works pedestal with fountains affixed on each side.  Yes, the springs water.

As we exit the park, the sign overhead - 

Now to really explore the town.  First though, some understanding.  Eureka Springs claims an estimated 56 miles of stone walls.  Skilled stonemasons constructed most of the walls between 1885 and 1910.  The limestone used was sometimes quarried on site, but the majority was transported to the town site by horse drawn wagons or railroad flatcars from the quarry near Beaver, six miles away and the railroad junction 2 miles north of Eureka Springs.  In the first census of Eureka Springs in 1880, 30 men gave "stonemason" as their occupation.  They were drawn to the new town where construction of swellings and commercial buildings went on all day and into the night to keep up with demand.  Stonemasons built mainly foundations and retaining walls for the early wood structures.  Major fires in 1883 and 1888 brought about a change to stone and brick construction to safeguard against fire.  In 1890, a project to improve and widen the town's main street and beautify it's public places resulted in building many miles of stone walls.  This was a massive project as stonemasons constructed walls as much as 20' high along Spring, Howell and Main, the Boulevard and other streets.  Walls were built on either side of the stream flowing down Main Street and connected by arched stone bridges.  A new era of tourism began in 1948.  Ripley's "Believe it or Not," features in newspapers, radio, and "230 Winding, Twisting Streets" and "Rock Walls . . . Miles and Miles of Them."  Since the 1970 designation of Eureka Springs as a National Register Historic District, more miles of walls have been built in restoration and preservation efforts.

So, away we go.  We pretty much have the early morning streets all to ourselves.  Come along and see with us.

Yep, hiding from the rain is our super power today.  It comes and goes in bursts.

We are not out to locate all of the springs here, as there are at least 60, but if we come across them, we'll take a peek during our walk.  This is Sweet Spring and derived it's name from early townspeople who declared the water to have a pleasant, sweet taste.  The spring was originally located in the deep ravine below the present site.  A long wooden stairway led  up from the spring to the narrow wagon road then known as Rice Street, which is now called Spring Street. Around 1885 workmen dug into the mountainside above the street to locate the stream of water in a more accessible location.  A stone lined circular enclosure around the spring and finely pointed limestone walls were constructed against the hillside.  When Spring Street was widened, a small public area adjacent to the spring was set aside.  Wide boardwalks and wood benches were built.  A long wooden stairway led to a pathway and a street above the spring.

As we were hiding from the rain, a postman came by and we asked about the area.  He suggested looking at The Palace Hotel, which still contains a functioning bath house in the lower levels of the building.  Okay - 

A quick peek inside shows many of the original areas.  Bright, it is not.

Directly across the street, I notice a house build directly over a large rock.  Wonderful!!

Harding Spring is next.  It was named for J. Emmett Harding, a photographer who began the tradition of making photographs of people in front of the spring as souvenirs.  He built a small dwelling near the spring in the summer of 1879.  At that time, the spring was access by a narrow wagon track along a rocky ledge, leaving little room for gathering.  Hand labor was required to move a great deal of earth to create a level area in front of the spring.  A wide boardwalk and a wood stairway to the top of the cliff were built at that time.  Harding Spring is also known as the site of one of the most famous healings in Eureka Springs.  Twenty-year old Jennie Cowan had been blind for seven years following a severe illness.  Jennie used the waters of Basin Spring for several months to no avail.  She then began using the waters of Harding exclusively.  On August 22, 1880, her sight was restored.  Her exclamation "I can see" created an enormous sensation among the many people visiting Eureka Springs seeking the benefits of the healing waters.

On this part of Spring Street you can easily see how Eureka Springs follows the natural lines of the landscape.  Houses are built right into the bluff on the west side and buildings climb down the steep hillside on the other side.  "The houses rise tier above tier, and cling to the mountainside like a frightened monkey to a bareback horse, each structure being in immediate peril of going root first into the gulch below.  The streets, at places eighty feet apart, are fully half that distance above each other, they mount one above the other like giant steps; the buildings, four stories in front, and one storied in the rear or vice versa."  1882 The Daily Graphic.  It hasn't changed.

As we are looking at a placard telling the above story, Mister spots the house built on the rock.  The one that is STILL there and we shared above.  How cool.

Looking through the trees as we walk, I spot the Christ of the Ozarks statue.  It's kind of hard to see with the fog and mist and rain and . . . but it is there.

Just to show the height difference between street levels and because it's another spring but you are saved from history this time.

The Carnegie Public Library was completed in 1912 - one of two remaining Arkansas libraries build with funds from Andrew J. Carnegeie Foundation.  The library still has its early charm and visitors are welcome inside.  Before the library was built, there was an elegant gazebo marking the Spring Streeet entrance to the Crescent Hotel with a long stairway leading up.  The stone gazebo stairway remains to create a grand entrance to the library.

Across the street. 

Back on our side, and next to the library:  "This corner is still as charming as when it was "improved" in the late 1880s.  The spring gazebo was built in 1886 to replace a simpler one which burned - read below.  Landscaping benches, street lights and sidewalks were also installed then to create a lovely promenade.   Crescent Spring was revered for it's healing waters almost as much as the Basin.  The legendary Indian healing spring situated beside the wagon road on a hillside with a rocky outcropping described as "crescent" shaped, the spring was soon given that name.  As was Crescent Hotel, the fine limestone structure built at it's summit in 1886.  Street maps dated 1886 show a stone retaining wall and a circular enclosure of stone at the spring.  Adjacent to it, twelve stair steps of dressed beaver limestone lead to a public thoroughfare 10 feet in width extending to Park Avenue on the hillside above.  Earliest view, an artist's sketch of Crescent Spring, published in 1881 shows a simple wood shed, built to shade and protect the waters.  The shed was replaced by an ornated wood gazebo with copper clad roof constructed by 1886.  Landscaping benches, street lights and sidewalks were also installed then to create a lovely promenade.  The current-day Eureka Springs Preservation Society has restored historic street lamps to many of the springs."

Now for the stairway up to the Crescent Hotel.  Yep, a town of stairs and many are hidden.

As the hotel comes into view, I do a little research as I had earlier read that it was "haunted."   From their own webpage:  

When Marty and Elise Roenigk purchased the Crescent Hotel in 1997, they inherited a confused association with the paranormal and what seemed to be a hundred years worth of ghost stories. At that time, years before the TAPS Team of the popular SyFy Network’s Ghost Hunters program paid a visit to this Historic Hotel of America, many hotel owners might have hesitated to publicize the fact that their establishment was haunted, but the Roegniks were interested and decided to take a different approach.  That path was to restore the hotel as a destination spa resort but also persue what many had claimed: the 1886 Crescent Hotel was America’s Most Haunted Hotel. A key part of that early pursuit included Mr. Roenigk pursuing and hiring two certified mediums, Ken Fugate and Carroll Heath, both of San Francisco CA natives, to “read” the building. Their findings, plus the startling number of repeated sightings that had been recorded over the decades, became the basis of what has become the nightly Crescent Hotel Ghost Tour. It is only now, however, that one of the most compelling discoveries from that initial reading has become ever so clear.

Jack Moyer, hotel general manager for the Roenigk Era, recounted, “I clearly remember Carroll Heath stating that he had discovered a portal to ‘the other side’ for those who are on the same ‘frequency’.” Moyer, a skeptic at the time, laughed and continued, “I remember asking myself ‘what were we thinking’ trying to explore this unexplained world. But after more than a decade of working around the paranormal, I now assuredly recognize how many people truly connect to the spirits here at the Crescent. And there is a new and specific reason why.”  Moyer’s reason is the fact that after 18 years he has been confronted with the realm of a chilling coincidence that caused the original portal discovery to resurface. It started with dialogue involving Moyer and current hotel ghost tour manager Keith Scales.

“Keith came to me to share a concern about a phenomenon that had been reoccurring on his nightly tours,” Moyer explained. “That phenomenon included multiple guests who had grown faint, with a few passing out briefly, at the same tour stop with no reasonable explanation. Then Scales described the location and it was the area that had been identified as a portal more than a decade ago by Heath.”  “Scales then took me to the place and pinpointed the portal phenomenon as happening just outside the hotel’s ‘annex’ entrance, exactly where Heath had identified the location of his portal years ago,” Moyer disclosed.

This phenomenon has guests suddenly turning pale, falling against and then sliding down the wall in a faint. Although the loss of consciousness does not last very long and complete recovery is immediate, it tends to further substantiate the hotel’s legendary supernatural connection to the paranormal.  Moyer went on to say, “What made that moment most chilling was when Keith and I realized that this portal was directly above the ‘morgue’ located in the bottom level of the hotel.”

Now in its seventeenth year, the ghost tour of the 1886 Crescent Hotel continues to increase in popularity. Paranormal evidence in the form of personal experiences, orb sightings and other anomalous photography keeps coming in, oftentimes on the tours themselves lending credence to the ghostly legend.  “That legend continues to grow as yet another phenomenon is recognized, one that occurs crescent hotel morgue with uncanny frequency about every couple of weeks or so,” Scales added. “What makes it legendary is that seems to rise up in a vertical plane from the notorious Norman Baker’s morgue.” (It should be noted that Norman Baker from Muscatine IA purchased the hotel in 1937 and operated it as a “cancer curing” hospital until late 1939 when he was arrested for mail fraud.)

Scales was quick to point out the Crescent Hotel is super-cautious about accepting events as supernatural. He stated that 95 percent of reported paranormal phenomena can be explained by normal means but there is always a residue, maybe five percent of experiences, that defy explanation, “We don’t know why some people have a tendency to faint at this particular place, we only know that they do at the place where activity of various kinds has been reported over decades.”  Both Moyer and Scales agree that the most curious fact is that this event has never been known to occur anywhere else on the tour except at this one, specific location, a location that sits directly above the infamous morgue.  “Whether there are portals to other realities here at the 1886 Crescent Hotel or not, no one can say, confirm, nor deny,” Moyer concluded. “It’s all part of the mysterious, unexplained happenings of America’s Most Haunted Hotel.”

Well now, let's go from one type of spirituality to the next.  We have arrived at St. Elizabeth's Catholic Church.  It's raining on us again and a step inside would be lovely.

Run --- 

Even while getting soaked, I have to stop.  I'm such a hot mess most of the time.  Ahhhh, inside.  So beautiful.

I adore the simplicity --- so many times I find Catholic churches a bit ornamental.

Back outside and the rain has stopped for a bit again but look how shiny it made the dome.

Finding fun along the way back into town and our car.

Believe it or not, it's only 10:30 in the morning but that ends our on-foot jaunt around town.  We have a LOT of day left so I am breaking it up into several posts.  Stay tuned -- more coming.