Since 2015, fans of the Ozark Mountains Fun Guide have enjoyed the fruits of Rebecca Becker’s research into the remarkable lives of the young women who attended Crescent College and Conservatory for Young Women.
Founded by the Eureka Springs Investment Company, Crescent College was established in 1908 as an exclusive boarding school for young women, and graduated a surprising number of artists, musicians, writers, activists, educators, entertainers and what we would now call cultural influencers.
And you thought the Crescent Hotel was only famous for its ghost stories…
The school opened with 88 students in 1908 and ran each September until June while the hotel tourist season slumbered. The school closed in 1924 and reopened in 1930 as Crescent Junior College, closing finally in 1934.
The education offered to the girls was considered elite. Besides a high school education, the college had accredited coursework through the University of Arkansas that allowed their graduates to join universities at the junior level. Concerts and theater performances were held, several sororities operated on campus, and it even had a drum corps. Sports were encouraged, and the girls had the opportunity to ride horses, swim in the private lake, play tennis, and hike around the 27-acre campus. However, the college’s most popular sport was basketball.
Now entering its second decade, Becker’s ongoing Crescent College History Project continues to unearth a trove of students whose life stories are often more mesmerizing than any tales of ghosts, as one can see from current posts to the project’s page on Facebook.
Becker’s own saga in connection with the hotel and the college began with a dental appointment in Portland, Ore., where she was teaching at Portland State and Lewis & Clark College. Her dentist was from Tahlequah, Okla., and was familiar with Eureka Springs.
“I used to trade my paintings for her dental work,” Becker said. “When I was looking to move, she said I should move to Eureka Springs, because it was the place for artists. My honey, Keith [Scales], came to check it out and fell in love with Eureka Springs within minutes. He called me and I’d never heard him so excited!
“He came with our two dogs ahead of me, because I was teaching and had to finish out the year. And then of course, selling a home in 2009 was… a little tricky. Lots of adventures on both sides.
“We met when we were both acting for Portland Repertory Theater and were hired to do a gig for Nike,” Becker said. “For twenty years in Portland, Keith was artistic director of the renowned Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon, where he directed and created new English versions of the Greek classics.”
Becker choreographed, did all the graphic design, and composed music for that work.
“Our connection with the Crescent started because our dear next-door neighbors Ken Fugate and Carroll Heath ran the ghost tours,” Becker said.
“Keith was for many years Tour Manager at the Crescent Hotel. When he first started, he heard stories about one of the ghosts of the Crescent Hotel, the Girl in the Mist. Some folks thought (in fact, some categorically stated) she had been a student when the Crescent was a women’s college.
“I taught history in college for decades, and before that, I was the researcher for T.H. Breen, an incredible historian, when I was in grad school so Keith asked me to investigate to see if there was a student at Crescent who fit the story.
“This led to two things: I painted portraits of the most well-known ghosts as I saw them in my imagination. My portraits of Michael and Theodora still hang in their respective rooms in the hotel, and much more important, it led to the Crescent College History Project.
“And, by the way, there’s no substantiation for the Girl in the Mist having gone to Crescent College. None. Zero. During Keith’s tenure, the guides made that clear, so scotch that rumor!”
During this time Scales wrote a play many Eurekans will remember; Not Really a Door, which ran at the Crescent Hotel Theater for 10 years to enthusiastic reviews. It was about two women: one a ghost, one a murderer. “The actresses were awesome” quoted one review. “The story will keep you on your toes with some twists and turns, so keep up with it if you want to figure out who is really ‘back from the dead… with baggage’.”
Becker played one of the women and created all the graphics for the department along with paintings of the ghosts.
“Mostly, though, my focus was on discovering stories of the college. And that’s still the case, of course,” Becker said. “I had, for many years, a museum in the hotel dedicated to the project, and a Facebook page dedicated to the research I did and the (factual) stories I found.
Eventually, COVID put an end to everything. Scales was no longer manager and the Crescent College museum Becker had established was closed.
“Neither of us is connected to the hotel now, except tangentially, through the articles I write for the Fun Guide and on Facebook,” Becker said. “The hotel was about to finance a pretty substantial research trip for me, and I had the entire itinerary approved when COVID put an end to that, too.”
Meanwhile, Scales wrote a popular book about the Crescent’s ghosts, called House of a Hundred Rooms, and one about the Basin Park Hotel ghosts, weaving in legends and history, called Seven Story Hotel, which Becker illustrated and designed covers for.
Meanwhile, the Crescent College History project continues.
“I’ve profiled hundreds and hundreds of lives on the Crescent College History Project Facebook page, not to mention ten years of Fun Guide articles – and I spent an incredible number of hours every day, researching and writing and learning more!
“I correspond with many descendants and have sent out exhaustive lists of questions to grandchildren and great-nephews and nieces all over the country. Historical museums everywhere are my friends, and our local library is extraordinary at tracing down documents and volumes for me that had been hidden away in archives elsewhere.
“That period was undoubtedly the perfect one for a researcher; nearly every town had a newspaper, even very small towns, and the doings of its citizens were recorded in minute detail. Women were aware of being on the cusp of tremendous change, so they often recorded their own lives. And it was in print. On paper.
“Historians looking back on the last 40 years are going to be desolate. As newspapers disappear, as people stop writing down their thoughts, as they use digital media that changes and becomes obsolete and inaccessible within a tiny span of years, they won’t be able to discover the past the way I’ve been able to. Even photographs – people can’t even access their own images in the digital era when they change operating systems or devices. We’re erasing ourselves. It hurts.”