City Set Upon a Hill


Though I’ve spent most of my life in my native state of Arkansas, I’ve never really visited the scenic northwestern part of the state. Recently I worked on beginning to remedy that. As part of my sightseeing I traveled to one of the state’s real gems, Eureka Springs.

How do you describe the town of Eureka Springs? For starters, imagine a medieval Italian hill town of the sort one sees in travel books, with its houses on all different levels and its warren of steep, narrow streets, as crooked as a broken-backed snake. Now imagine this type of townscape combined with an American historical neighborhood of Victorian houses and brick or brownstone storefronts. That might give you some idea.

While you can drive up those narrow streets if you take it slow and easy, the real way to see Eureka Springs (assuming your heart and knees are up to it) is on foot. As you wind your way up the main business district you find that the view changes every few yards. Here you see a cliff-side vista; there a hairpin turn brings you face-to-face with a retaining wall. Here there is an historic hotel or bathhouse; there a file of commercial buildings, each built to fit an irregularly-shaped site.

On the uphill side of the street all the buildings back up against a sheer rock wall. Those on the downhill side all gain a couple of stories in back as the hillside falls away. Steep, narrow stairways serve as alleys between buildings, with landings on which open hidden storefronts. Architectural details abound—stone or wrought-iron pillars, wrought-iron balconies, garish signs, plate-glass storefronts, ornamental tin ceilings. In some places the sidewalks are made of stone instead of concrete.

Now and then along the uphill side you come across a niche in the rock that has been turned into a little landscaped park. These niches are the sites of the mineral springs that gave the town its name. Eureka Springs was founded as a bathhouse resort in the late 1800s, where tourists went to “take the waters” in hope of healing their ailments. You can still get a therapeutic bath there today.

The main emphasis now is on arts and crafts. Numerous artists and artisans have settled in the town or in the surrounding area. Local shops are full of their jewelry, paintings, photography, and other work. The town is a shopper’s paradise for anyone in search of accessories or decorating ideas.

The residential areas are just as diverse as the business district. Again you see the pattern of uphill-side buildings backed against the rock, downhill-side structures gaining extra floors in back. Many houses are so close to the street you can reach out and touch them. Few have much yard to speak of. What you do see are tiny landscaped gardens and stairways. At one point while walking down the street I found myself face-to-paw with a couple of sculpted lions sitting on an outdoor stair landing.

There are scores of well-preserved Victorian houses, with their Queen Anne turrets, gingerbread fretwork, porches, and elaborately-turned balustrades. Some are gaily painted. Others could use some paint. A number have become bed and breakfast inns. Most are still residences. Many of the houses are quite modest, really. This is a living town, not a millionaires’ getaway scene.

Away from the streets the houses are connected by a dense network of steep pathways. It must take the locals a good while to learn them all. The steep slopes and ravines and winding streets make the town look like it must be much larger than it is. While I was exploring up (and I do mean UP) a narrow side street in the morning, a man sitting on his porch evidently figured I must be lost and asked me where I was trying to go. I said I was just looking around until time for the nearby Carnegie library to open. Without rising from his seat he pointed out a shortcut that would take me down to it.

The route involved descending a steep stone stairway, crossing a slippery pedestrian bridge that spanned a narrow ravine, negotiating a very rugged little stairway, and then going down a third set of steps to the street. Sure enough the library was only a few doors up from there. The first part of the path took me right across the man’s yard. I commented that it was hard to tell what paths were considered public and which were private. “Nobody cares,” he said. Actually his Scottish terrier apparently did care; she barked at me until I had gotten well away from the house.

I had lots of friendly encounters like that. That frosty morning I got cheerful hellos from every stroller and dog-walker, and even the garbage collector riding on the back of his truck. The lady at the desk of the local museum was so chatty I almost didn’t get away. A gallery owner and I had a nice talk about the lovely surrealist paintings on her walls as she took a break from her remodeling project.

Another store owner told me a rather off-color joke about women and bikers (I bought something from him anyway). The owner of the motel where I stayed (one of those old-fashioned local affairs where some of the rooms are little individual cabins) told me about the boat he owned that he had never brought down from the family home in South Dakota. He wore a Sturgis biker rally T-shirt.

How do you describe Eureka Springs? I’m not sure it’s possible to do it justice. The paragraphs I’ve written above are no more than stray tiles from a large and colorful mosaic. To truly describe the town, you really have to go and see it for yourself.