A dinner guest offered a startling factoid. “Forty percent (40%) of the population of Eureka Springs,” she said, “is comprised of single women.” This was affirmed by another guest (a single woman) who told a little story:
“When I first came to Eureka Springs,” she began, “an old lady came up to me and said, ‘I hope you didn’t come here looking for a man.’ I told her I wasn’t. ‘That’s good, honey,’ she said, ‘cuz every woman in town who’s got a man has to work two jobs just to keep him.’”
We’ll evaluate the factoid in a moment, but their backstory is that there are a lot of single women in town who support a lot of shiftless men. These men were not discussed in detail, but the impression was of mopey, unemployed failures to launch –representing all generations.
Reliable data from 2014 sources shows that 944 men and 1,147 women live within our city limits. Fifty-five percent (55%) are women and 45% are men. Because the 55% includes women of all ages and statuses it was hard to drill down to find 40%, but a solid 34% (18-65) are single, widowed, or divorced. Twenty-four percent (24%) of men – straight and gay – are footloose.
This may make the ladies sad, but the bigger story is that the median age of Eureka Springs’ people is 50, and our population has declined by 8.5% since the last census. Outside of planned retirement communities, that makes us one of the oldest city populations in the state of Arkansas. By contrast, Berryville’s population has grown by nearly 22%, and the median age is 34.
Meanwhile, our city leaders are working overtime to chisel more sales tax dollars – to fix our wobbly sewer and water system – out of the Baby Booming Jesus Freaks and Biker Freaks who come to visit. Which they’ve been fixin’ to fix – the sewer system, not the Freaks (the Freaks are fine) – since I got here in 1995.
Suggestions to engage in genuine economic development, alongside tourist promotion, are met with the dirtiest of looks. God forbid that we’d do anything to stem our population loss, or to encourage young families to live here.
Probably the most important thing that Eureka Springs could do is put some real effort into the Community Center to include a pool and other exciting activities that kids and teenagers would be interested. Secondly, Eureka Springs will have to have jobs and opportunities available to these young families because they work and need full-time work (as do many of your current citizens). Thirdly (sic?), Eureka Springs needs industry…service, manufacturing, etc. to provide those jobs. Now, I live in ES part-time and love it, and maybe someday I’ll move here permanently, and my background is business (university professor, KSBDC director, consultant, served on Wichita’s Metropolitan Area Planning Commission for 10 years, etc.—–and I also think that the new Community Center should work with a college or university to provide college courses/certificates/degrees in Eureka Springs. I have experience with this, and feel that this could be very successful. Finally, I suggest that the Eureka Springs Chamber or one of its committees should contact the closest SBDC location in Arkansas. When I was the State Director of Kansas Small Business Development Center, we worked with thousands of small businesses throughout Kansas….and I modelled our services on Arkansas. Bill Clinton was governor at the time and he worked closely with the developers of that SBDC. They can help you. Today the Arkansas group is called the Arkansas Small Business & Technology Development Center….its nearest location is in Fayetteville. Bill Fox is the director. (479-575-5148) I would recommend the a group within the chamber work with the community center group (Diane Murphy) to determine possible strengths/needs for such development that would not upset residents.