Culture + Lifestyle

Eureka Springs

A Former Spa Town in the Ozarks Where the Victorian Era Lives On

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Mystical things have always happened in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. Dozens of natural mineral springs emerge from the steep limestone hills of the town that's known as America's little Switzerland.

"People find something very special here," says June Westphal, one of the founders of the Eureka Springs Historical Museum and the town's unofficial historian. "Being a native, I know. I feel it, too."

Today Eureka Springs reportedly has the largest collection of unspoiled Victorian houses in the central United States.

The local Osage Indians called the springs healing waters and allowed Cherokees and Delawares to partake of them when they were ill. It was considered a sacred place.

In 1854 Dr. Alvah Jackson was hunting in the area with a son who suffered from a painful eye condition. The doctor bathed his eyes in the springs for days, and they were healed. He then bottled the water and sold it as Dr. Jackson's Eye Water.

By 1879 about 20 families were living at the springs in tents or log cabins. They called the town Eureka, meaning "I have found it!"

"People started coming from Chicago, St. Louis, New York, Vermont, the Carolinas and Texas," Westphal says. They thought the waters could cure paralysis, diabetes, asthma, insomnia, dropsy, rheumatism, gout and stomach problems. "They were ill and badly needed help, so their families brought them here."

It wasn't easy. The nearest railroad station was in Pierce City, Missouri. From there it was a nine-hour stagecoach ride across the mountains. But they kept coming.

A railroad link was built in 1882. By 1884, 16,000 people crowded into the town. They couldn't build houses fast enough. Several local sawmills provided boards and ornate millwork for houses in a style known as Eureka Victorian, which encompasses Queen Anne, Stick, Gothic Revival, Craftsman and Neoclassical. Porches were decorated with turned spindles, roofs sported curvy corbels, and shingles were arranged in fish-scale patterns.

Today Eureka Springs reportedly has the largest collection of unspoiled Victorian houses in the central United States. In 1970 the historic district was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The houses are painted in bright pink, green, yellow and blue, with contrasting trims, to create a picturesque effect.

Eureka Springs has been called a stair-step town, because its houses are stacked, one behind the other, on 20 steep hills. After the wood structures downtown had burned for the third time, many of the hotels, shops, churches and municipal buildings were reconstructed with local limestone or brick.

According to one account, some 60,000 cubic yards of limestone was used to make walls and buildings like the Renaissance Revival courthouse, the 1901 Palace Hotel and Bath House, the 1928 auditorium and the Basin Park Hotel, a seven-story landmark dating from 1905.

Ironically, the grandest house in town, a pink-and-blue Queen Anne-style mansion, was built not in Eureka Springs but in Carthage, Missouri, 90 miles away. The 12,000-square-foot house has turrets, balconies, verandas, two sets of porches and gigantic circular windows. The base is faced with hand-chiseled sandstone; the structural support is Carthage marble. It took 18 months to disassemble, move and reassemble the house.

What adds to the town's appeal is that its residents care about it. Mayor Katherine Harrison and her husband, Lawrence, just spent the last three years gutting, rebuilding and restoring an 1881 wood-frame house that had been condemned. It was a massive undertaking. They recycled the original heart-pine floors to make window frames and kitchen cabinets, installed new plaster walls and wood floors and rebuilt four terraces in the front and six in back.

Eureka Springs has a population of 2,300 and welcomes a million visitors a year. There are more than 50 hotels and motels and more than 40 bed-and-breakfasts, some of which, like The 1881 Crescent Cottage Inn, are more elegant and comfortable than the hotels.

Visitors enjoy the Victorian architecture, the flower-filled parks, the fine restaurants, the many music festivals (folk, jazz, gospel, country, blues, classical, spiritual) and the shops.

There are 27 antiques shops. Mary Ellen Sheard, of Crystal Gardens Antiques, has one of the best. She sells walnut furniture and Arkansas striped Niloak clay vases from the early 1900s. Sow's Ear Antiques is known for local artwork from the 1880s, Blue Ridge pottery, vintage linens and the furniture that proprietor Susan Krotz makes with recycled wood. Castle Antiques at Inspiration Point has vintage painted pine cupboards, benches and harvest tables, old wood rifle shell boxes and antique croquet sets. Owners Dwight and Wanda Kertzman call the early pieces "primitives." Collectors shop for art glass, pottery, jewelry and stone lithographs in fine galleries like Zarks, Satori Arts and Quicksilver.

Last June actors Billy Bob Thornton and Lisa Blount were in town shooting a movie called Chrystal, and he reportedly announced that he wanted to buy a house. The town sells itself.


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