The Eureka Springs Story

Long before Eureka Springs became a Victorian mountain village of winding streets and haunted hotels, the Ouachita Mountains held a secret. For centuries, Native American tribes returned to these limestone springs, believing the waters carried healing powers from the earth itself. This is the story of how a remote Arkansas hollow transformed into one of the most sought-after health resorts in America, where tuberculosis sufferers once arrived by railroad hoping for salvation and spiritualists gathered to commune with the dead. Rayburn weaves together the legends the Cherokee and Osage told of the valley, the rivalries of the entrepreneurs who built its grand hotels, and the strange convergence of medical quackery and genuine wonder that made this town a destination for the desperate and the curious alike. Part mythology, part frontier history, the book captures a place where the line between legend and reality has always blurred, and where the springs still flow with the same quiet persistence that first drew humans to their edges thousands of years ago.