The Eureka Springs Story

by Otto Ernest Rayburn

A large crowd attended the dedication of the “Bridge Studio” on May 3, 1931. Dr. Charles H. Brough, World War I governor of Arkansas, was the speaker. The story of the unique bridge and its idealistic purpose was told in newspapers throughout the land. But it was a dream that soon faded. When Sam Leath sold his court in the middle thirties and became manager of the Chamber of Commerce at Harrison, the “Bridge Studio” was torn down.

A unique business enterprise in the early days at Eureka Springs was the C. H. McLaughlin grocery, said to be one of the cleanest, best equipped and best arranged groceries in the United States. Mr. McLaughlin built “a better mouse trap” and the world made a beaten path to his door.

Another interesting project, located four miles north of Eureka Springs, was Elk Ranch, operated by Gen. Geo. W. Russ and the Riverside Land and Livestock Company from 1902 to about 1917. This ranch contained about 1,500 acres and the principal enterprise was the breeding of blooded horses. It received its name from the herd of elk that had the run of the ranch. This herd numbered about 130 at one time.

A recent project, built by Mr. and Mrs. A. W. Quigley on their farm four miles south of Eureka Springs is “Quigley’s Castle.” It has been called the Ozarks’ strangest dwelling. It is a large stone house with the outer walls covered with great flat stones set on edge and held together with cement. These walls are covered with small, colorful picture rocks and fossils which Mrs. Quigley picked up over a period of years. She engineered the building of the house and placed the rocks in position. These walls are a geological treasury.

The inside of Quigley’s Castle is a botanical garden and family home. The light enters through eight large picture windows. The rooms are built independent of the outer walls with the first floor three feet from the ground and a four foot space between wall and room. In this space grow many varieties of both tropical and Ozark plants such as rubber trees, rose bushes, oleanders and a banana tree. Some of these plants grow to a height of twenty-five feet, extending almost to the roof. The second floor has a waist-high railing built around the rooms to prevent stepping off into space. Small bridges permit passage across the chasm at points of entry.

The iron dog which once stood on the pedestal in the Basin Circle where the soldier monument now stands is a missing link in the Eureka Springs story. Photographs made from about 1907 to the early thirties show this dog. According to the old timers, this iron monster, which weighed 400 pounds, once belonged to a family named Squires and was an ornament in the yard of their home on the hillside at the rear of the Basin Park Hotel. One Halloween night about 1907 the boys moved the iron dog to the park and set it on the pedestal. In bringing it down the path back of the hotel they broke off its tail. The city authorities let it remain on the pedestal until in the thirties, when it disappeared and the soldier monument took its place. No one seems to know what became of the dog, but it is reported that it may be seen in the yard of a home at Springfield, Missouri.

Old-timers will remember “Old Chapultepec,” the cannon which was captured by United States troops during the battle of Chapultepec in the Mexican War and brought to Eureka Springs by General Powell Clayton when he located here in the early 1880’s. In 1933 J. Rosewater had an article on this old relic in an Arkansas newspaper. Quote:

“In the yard of the Missouri and North Arkansas railway at Eureka Springs, the wood in its once sturdy wheels so decayed they provide a very wobbly support, stands a muzzle-loading cannon, so old that few in this community know its history, or how it came to be in the depot yard.

“Old-timers said the cannon was called ‘Old Chapultepec,’ and that it was captured by United States troops during the war with Mexico at the battle of Chapultepec in 1847. It saw service during the Civil war and was left at Little Rock, where Gen. Powell Clayton, Reconstruction governor of Arkansas after the Civil war, obtained it and brought it to Eureka Springs in 1882, while making his home here after he ceased to be governor.

“For years it was displayed at public places in the city and at one time stood on the lawn of the Crescent Hotel. General Clayton gave it to the city and it was moved to the depot, Clayton being interested in the Missouri and North Arkansas railway, which was known then as the St. Louis and Eureka Springs railway and terminated at Eureka Springs. Several years later a group known as the Civic Improvement Association built an inclosure and a pedestal for the cannon.