Exploring the Amazing EUREKA SPRINGS! - Travel Guide

Let's explore Eureka Springs, Arkansas and get off the beaten path. Eureka Springs is a fabulous vacation spot. People from around the world come here to enjoy the passion play, downtown, and all the community has to offer. But there's so much more to Eureka Springs, so what do you say we take a look at the downtown and some of the popular sites like the Flatiron Building and then go off the beaten path. Did you know in some parts of Eureka Springs what is now the first floor used to be the second floor? That's right, during the 1800s due to flooding they raised the street and the second floor became the first floor. But you can still tour parts of underground Eureka Springs. Another thing you'll notice about Eureka Springs is that there are a lot of steps, and I mean a lot of steps, but it's a city built on the side of a mountain. Eureka Springs is centered around the Basin Park which is located right next to the historic Basin Hotel. This is where the community really started. As you may know, Eureka Springs came into being after the discovery of a spring and people believe that this spring held healing powers. The spring was found in this cliff. Soon people were flocking to the area. This forced the community to cap off the spring so they could control the flow of it and preserve it. After capping off the spring they rerouted the flow of the spring water to this fountain in Basin Park. Of course at one time this fountain was much larger and people could drink from it or bathe in it. When you come to Eureka Springs don't just stick to the main touristy area of the downtown. Get off a couple two three blocks in any direction and explore what there is. There's all kinds of beautiful shops and stores and great old hotels and beautiful churches, so make sure you take time to enjoy that also. This is the Palace Hotel and Bath House. It was built in 1901 and it's just a few blocks off the beaten path and it's on the trolley route. All the woodwork is original and it's absolutely gorgeous. Many of the lighting fixtures and much of the ornate woodwork is also original to the 1901 hotel. And this is the original elevator. Of course you can't ride it anymore. And finally they still offer mineral spas in the Bath House. Just down from the Palace Hotel is Sweet Spring. The residents named it Sweet Spring because they felt that the water had a sweet taste to it. Originally the spring was much deeper and there was a wooden staircase leading down to it. But in 1885 they raised the stream of water so that it was more accessible and built the circular stone enclosure you see today around it. Another spring that's somewhat off the beaten path is called the Grotto Spring and you literally head underground to experience it. You'll notice the words esto perpetua above the entrance to the spring. That's latin for let it be perpetual. The phrase symbolized the community's belief that the healing waters of the springs would flow forever. As you can tell by the name of the spring and the shrine it contains, it's also considered to be a place of spiritual connection and a place to find peace. The city took this belief so seriously some of the first city ordinances were written in order to protect the spring for public use in perpetuity. This hotel which was built in 1886 has quite the reputation. This is the Crescent Hotel. Now it's supposedly the most haunted hotel in America. I don't think we'll see any ghosts. As you head into the Crescent Hotel it looks like any other 19th century hotel. The woodwork is rich and ornate. In fact the lobby is pretty much as it was in 1886 when it was built. Very little has changed. It still contains the expensive decorative pieces and it has an incredibly ornate fireplace. So where does the haunting thing come in? This is the desk of Norman Baker. He was a flim flam man who claimed to have a miraculous cure for cancer. He purchased the hotel in 1937 to open a cancer curing center. For two years Norman Baker claimed this was where sick people got well but Baker had no cure. Instead when his patients died he would take them down to the basement that served as a temporary morgue and they basically disappeared. But Norman Baker kept tissue samples in jars as souvenirs maybe. Nobody messed with the downstairs of the hotel until the early 60s when the owners at that time discovered the sick macabre collection of jars. To get rid of them they took them behind the hotel and buried them. They were accidentally discovered in 2019. Archaeologists found more than 500 jars from Baker's sick collection. Oh well, I didn't see a single ghost. Kind of disappointed. This is Quigley's Castle and it's got a pretty bizarre story behind it. They bill themselves as the Ozark's strangest dwelling and I'm telling you it's true. A lady by the name of Elsie Quigley loved rocks and she spent her entire life from the time she was a child collecting rocks. When she got married she made her husband promise her he would build her a home made out of her rocks. However that was during World War II and building supplies were scarce so they were living in a small shack on the property. Not to be deterred one morning as her husband went to work Elsie Quigley told her children today we're gonna tear down the shack. That way her husband would be forced to begin building her dream home of rocks. So she decorated everything with rocks and the shells her husband would collect while she collected her rocks. I've got to tell you this place was a bit bizarre. I'm not sure I could live in a home where everything was so busy and so strange. Now I remember when I was a young man we had something very similar to this in our kitchen. It was a hand pump and it was hooked up to a cistern that was underneath the house that would collect rainwater or would have water from an outside well pumped into it. And then when you were inside you could pump the handle of this and it would bring fresh water into the kitchen. I'm not really sure I'd visit this place again but if you're into eclectic design this is the place for you. But this is a place I'm really glad we stopped at. Pivot Rock Park. It's inexpensive and it's got some really cool natural rock formations. It's probably a little less than one mile out and back and the trail's pretty easy. First you'll come to a natural bridge. Now this may not look too awfully big but it's about six feet tall. And then there's this beauty. This is pivot rock. It's really a pedestal stone but they call it pivot rock. You know and it's amazing when you look at it how over the years something like this was formed. I mean it just makes you look at the you know mother nature and go how amazing is that. A little further down the trail you come to what they call stacked rocks. These are rock formations in which it looks like the rocks themselves are layered one on top of the other. And of course hikers have added their own unique touch by stacking rocks on top of them. So I stacked my rock also. Another off the main street path is the beautiful Thorn Crown Chapel. Built in 1979 it stands 48 feet tall and contains 425 windows and over 6,000 square feet of glass. The chapel wasn't built as a tourist attraction although it does attract many people. It was primarily built according to the builders as a place of worship, devotion, and contemplation. Another interesting site that's definitely off the beaten path is the Little Golden Gate Bridge. It's located about seven miles north of Eureka Springs. When cars arrive at the entrance to the bridge they have to stop on both sides and they have to look across the bridge to see if there's anybody else on the bridge because it's only a one-lane bridge. Its actual name is Beaver Bridge due to its location in the community of Beaver, Arkansas. But it got its nickname due to the fact it kind of looks like the famous Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. After a flood took out the old concrete bridge in 1943 they began construction on this bridge in 1947. Over $107,000 and two years later this bridge was open to the public and for the last 75 years it's been getting folks across the White River. As we head back into town we made our way to Magnetic Spring. The community believed that if you put metal objects in the spring they'd become magnetized and they believed those magnetic properties had healing power. In the 1800s they believed that if you drank or bathed in this water that they believed was magnetically charged it would cure anything from cancer to drug addiction. And addiction was pretty prevalent since many medications contained alcohol and narcotics. Another great place to go that's kind of off the beaten path is Blue Spring Heritage Center. There are beautiful gardens, places of historical significance, and an amazing cobalt blue spring. The spring produces 38 million gallons of water every 24 hours. The actual opening of the spring is 25 feet beneath the surface, but you can see from this time-lapsed video how it still swirls with great force. Just downstream from the spring is an old dam, and just to the south of that dam was the Blue Spring Saw and Grist Mill that was built around 1840. However, during the Civil War it was burned and this mill was built to replace it in 1903, and it remained at this location until the 1940s. This is the original grinding wheel from the 1840 mill. Eureka Springs is perhaps best known for the Great Passion Play. Unlike its big brother Passion Play in Oberammergau, Germany, which is performed once every 10 years, the Great Passion Play in Eureka Springs is performed annually, and it has been seen by almost 8 million people. And of course, the most well-known Passion Play landmark is the Christ of the Ozarks. Standing just over 65 feet tall with an armspan of 65 feet, this statue of Jesus Christ weighs over 2 million pounds, and it was built strictly by hand. There was no part of the cement or plaster which was poured. Now, I have to make a confession. I'm a When it came to visiting Onyx Cave, I was a little apprehensive. Now, you might ask, why are there meals ready to eat in a cave? Well, in the 1960s and 70s, this cave actually acted as a fallout shelter in case of nuclear attack. Maybe that's why there was a wishing well. Onyx Cave did not get its name because there's onyx in here. Rather, it got its name from Flowstone, which is a smooth mineral deposit that forms in a limestone cave. This Flowstone was oftentimes referred to as Cave Onyx, thus the name Onyx Cave. In addition, there are at least four other states that have caves which contain the name Onyx, despite the fact there are no onyx located within those caves either. When you go into the cave, you're several hundred feet beneath the ground. It's kind of an eerie feeling, but on a hot summer's day, it's kind of nice because the temperature stays a constant 57 degrees or 14 degrees celsius year-round. This formation is known as the dragon, and this formation is known as the elephant. Let's take a look inside the elephant. It's kind of cramped, but you get the idea of what the inside of these formations look like. It's really quite amazing. Within the cave, you'll find both stalagmites and stalactites. You'll even find a few pillars or stalagmites, which is when a stalagmite and a stalactite meet. Onyx Cave offers self-guided tours, or for a few bucks more, a tour guide will take you through the cave and answer any questions and take you deeper into the cave. So when you visit Eureka Springs, it's well worth a six-mile trip to Onyx Cave. We hope you enjoyed our video on Eureka Springs. If you did, give us a thumbs up and hit the subscribe button. Thanks for watching Any Way You Travel.