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• HOME • GENERAL STORE • NATURAL HERITAGE • HISTORY, CULTURE & CRAFTSMANSHIP |
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History
• Eureka Springs |
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| Eureka Springs Index • Basin Spring • Crescent Hotel • The Southern • Basin Park Hotel Into The Hills Index • Eureka Springs • Riverside Inn History Index • Into The Hills • Upper South • Native America • The Irish • The Germans • Civil War • Baldknobbers • Railroads • Ozark Bridges • Ozark Mills • Historic Roads • Cemeteries Culture Index • Agriculture • Book Learning • Cooking • Craftsmanship • Faith in the Hills • History • Music • People of the Hills • Storytelling • Tourism |
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The first crowds of health seekers encamped here in 1879, drawn by the promise of near-miraculous cures.
The city was named on this site July 4, 1879. The first governing body, the Committe of Twelve, was elected here in August, 1879. The first townsite survey was platted with the spring and surrounding reservation of protected land as its centerpiece. A plan of lots, blocks and streets, extending in all directions, encompassed many other nearby springs.
In 1890, the Eureka Springs Board of Public Affairs created a formal setting for the spring with limestone walls, fountains and walks. About 1921, the original wood gazebo was replaced with the bandshell still regularly used for public performaces.
Following World War I, the Doughboy statue was placed as a memorial to local men who served their country.
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Although Basin Spring is the centrally located and perhaps most visible spring in town, there are numerous historic springs in the immediate area:
Calif Spring
Sweet Spring
Harding Spring
Grotto Spring
Magnetic Spring
Cave Spring
Little Eureka Spring
Onyx Spring
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Article credits: At left, historic information regarding Eureka Springs landmarks are made available to the public by a series of plaques found throughout the town.
StateoftheOzarks thanks the Eureka Springs Chamber of Commerce and the Community Development Partnership for making this information available.
Additionally, special thanks to Glenna Booth, Arkansas Community Excellent Coordinator of Eureka Springs.
The central path in the Basin Spring Park meanders high above the street in downtown Eureka Springs. Due to the natural beauty of the area, it's not hard to see why many have fallen in love with the town. Here, a glimpse of the bandshell roof may be seen through the trees.
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"...Eureky, listed on contemporary maps as Eureka Springs, is an ever astonishing mountainside town in what were then backhill Ozarks of Carroll County.
At the turn of the century, the discovery of allegedly medicinal waters in the uniquely vertical settlement had drawn a stampede of real or would-be sick people, ranging from the hopelesssly stricken or violently insane to the usual majority of comparatively healthy hypochondriacs and their accompanying kin.
Thus, almost overnight, the peculiarly inaccessible moonshiners' outpost had been changed into the biggest as well as the flimsiest town in the Arkansas Ozarks, with a transient and immigrant population of at least 25,000.
Most of the influx presently seeped and simmered away, but at the time of our pilgrimage to Uncle Greene's, Eureky was the wealth-and-wonder capital of the Ozarks."
— pages 24, 25, Wilson, Charles Morrow, The Bodacious Ozarks: True Tales of the Backhills, Pelican Publishing Company, 1959.