It’s fun living in a tourist town because we can watch people we don’t know watch us. We get a spirited inner swelling being in a town where we want to be, where friendships are lucky, unanticipated and potentially forever.
Eureka Springs has its share of alphas, hotheads and bluster, and that’s how it should be. They’re a counterweight for those who mow, shovel, drive, feed, lift, laugh, volunteer and keep an eye on each other.
Eureka Springs became an official Arkansas city on February 14, 1880, back when footpaths and stone stairways were created from necessity. Almost overnight, a crude camp grew into an enlightened town filled with pole houses and free-range children and horses.
Since then, Eureka Springs has survived four massive fires, flooding from underground springs that forced the city to raise a gulch called Mud Street, infrastructure failures, shysters, weather extremes and three pandemics, Spanish flu, AIDS and COVID.
Today, Eureka Springs is filled with artists, free thinkers, wanderers, activists, healers and philosophers. It’s real and doesn’t even notice.
You’re our Valentine, Eureka Springs, forever.
Where the beloved misfits fit, in love and peace.