Haunted Hotels by Tom Ogden

Author:Tom Ogden
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780762766499
Publisher: Globe Pequot

Chapter 14Taking theCure

1886 Crescent Hotel & Spa

Eureka Springs, Arkansas

Norman Baker, who fancied himself a doctor, turned a former hotel and women’s college in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, into a sanatorium to treat cancer. Did his regimen really result in miracle cures as he claimed? Probably not. But a miracle of sorts has occurred at the hotel: Baker, and apparently several others, have returned from the Other Side and taken up residence.

When Wendy decided she needed to get away for a long weekend, all her girlfriends said she had to go to Eureka Springs. Not only was the town itself a charmer, but because she worked at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, the resort town was only thirty-five miles away.

Eureka Springs is up in the Ozark Mountains, and the small town—it only has about 2,500 permanent residents—is set on a steep hillside. The place is known for its winding roads and quaint Victorian homes, and many of the buildings now house boutiques, art galleries, and crafts shops.

Across the valley from downtown is the Christ of the Ozarks, a seven-story-tall, white concrete statue of Jesus, and the city plays host to an annual production of The Great Passion Play, which draws thousands of visitors each spring.

Wendy wasn’t heading there for spiritual healing, though. She was giving herself a three-day retreat to undergo another type of renewal. She planned to pamper herself with massages, facials, body wraps—you name it—at the New Moon Spa located in the 1866 Crescent Hotel.

The town owes its existence to the cool mineral springs located throughout the region. In the mid-1800s, a doctor by the name of Alvah Jackson was convinced that his son’s enflamed eyes were healed by rinsing them with the waters of one pool named Basin Spring. During the Civil War, the doctor operated a “hospital” in a local cave and later bottled and sold the springwater as Dr. Jackson’s Eye Water.

Then, in 1879 a friend of his, Judge J. B. Saunders, claimed that by bathing in the pools he had cleared up a chronic and debilitating skin disease. Within weeks, the word was out, and people flocked to the region for the springs’ restorative powers. Is it any wonder that, when a town was founded there on February 14, 1880, it was named Eureka Springs? Within a year, the hamlet grew to a city of more than ten thousand.

Former Arkansas governor Powell Clayton moved to Eureka Springs in 1882, and he tirelessly began to promote the site’s bucolic air and scenic beauty. To attract tourists and settlers, the Eureka Springs Improvement Company, spearheaded by Clayton, was established to bring the railroad to town.

His campaign worked. Soon the streets were lined with fashionable houses and hotels. Perhaps foremost among the lodgings was the Crescent Hotel, which Clayton built with several partners in 1886. Architect Isaac L. Taylor was selected to design the hotel, which would sit on twentyseven acres a mile north of and overlooking the city. The walls were constructed of magnesium limestone quarried from

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.