Dan Ellis wishes to share his large accumulation of information that has been collected and placed in his numerous books.
These books are mostly factual with historical and cultural data assembled as discerned from official courthouse documents, reference books, library archives, cemetery records, news clippings, and personal interviews. All books contain many period photographs and maps.
This review is from: Romancing Eureka: We Found It ! (Paperback)
I love this book. Many books, pamphlets, brochures and articles have been written about Eureka Springs since it founding in 1880. It was then a mecca for people searching for miraculous cures for the common ailments of the day. Romancing Eureka pulls it all together with a charming story of two sisters in 1905 visiting the town for the first time and by chance encounter with a handsome, witty, extremely courteous and wealthy gentlemen, are whisked around town and it's outlying attractions in the grand style.
Much of what the girls encounter it present there today. Following the first world war, reliance on natural "cures" from drinking some particular water or bathing in some smelly mud fell out of favor due to the advances in medicine of the day, no matter how crude they appear today. Eureka Springs, as a spa fell on hard times. The population fell back to a few hundred from the thousands who previously sought to live there. Many of the buildings thrown up in the beginning had been lost to fires and by the early 1930's those that remained were salvaged and the building materials shipped off to more prosperous cities and towns. This was not a bad things. The lack of "progress" kept the town pretty much as it had always been, so much so that the whole town in on the Register of Historic Places!
Today however, Eureka has become a touristy place, hundreds of B&B's, guest houses and "attractions" designed to relieve the traveler of their burdensome extra cash. It is still a neat place to visit, like New Orleans French Quarter, or Key West's Duval Street, but don't expect antiquity except as interpreted by the merchants of the town. I love the book for the happy memories it brings back to me, a former resident of the town.
