Dark History 101
The Eureka Springs stories the brochures leave out.
Every story of Eureka Springs starts at the spring. This one keeps going.
In 1879, word got out that the water here could heal. Within months, four hundred people were camped in the hollow with their sick loved ones, sleeping in wagons and tents and on the bare ground. There was no plumbing, no sewer, no gas, no electricity, no roads, no government and no laws. Just water, hope and a whole lot of strangers.
What grew out of that mud was a town. A beautiful one, eventually. But the road there ran through death, debauchery and disease, bootlegging and brothels, grifters and gangsters, violence and lawlessness, and a hundred kinds of desperation.
That's the walk. Real history, real addresses, told standing in the places where it happened.
What you'll hear about
Murder and the first death ever recorded in Basin Spring Park
Brothels, bootlegging and the business of vice in a boomtown
Grifters, snake oil and the men who got rich selling a cure
Gangsters, bank robberies and a town with no law to speak of
What daily life actually cost the men and women who built this place
Carrie A. Nation, hatchet in hand, and the night she collapsed in the park
Fair warning
This is not the picture postcard story of healing water and Victorian beauty. That's our other tour, and it's a good one.
This one gets real. Expect frank talk about illness, death and the uglier corners of frontier life. It's history, not horror, and there's plenty of dark humor in it. But it isn't for small children. 13+ only.
The details
When Fridays and Saturdays at 2:00 PM, through December
Where Basin Spring Park, at the map kiosk closest to the Basin Park Hotel
How long 70 minutes
Who it's for Adults and older teens. Rain or shine, so dress for the weather.
What to bring Comfortable shoes and water. Our streets are historic, which is a polite way of saying uneven.