The first settlers at Eureka Springs considered the water from the Basin Spring to be a potent agency for healing and rejuvenation. Judge J. B. Saunders, one of the first to try the water, gave this report:

“In five weeks I lost thirty-three pounds in weight and forty odd pounds during my stay, and felt that I had been fully renovated, or made new, and was as active then and now as I ever was in my life. I will also add that from the frequent bathing of my head in its waters, and the improved condition of my health, portions of my hair changed from a yellowish white to black, its original color. The color of the hair then grown was not changed, but a new crop grew out from the scalp, the color of my hair in my younger days.”[15]

John Gaskins, the old bear hunter, seemed to think the water from this spring might influence the mental as well as the physical life of those who used it. He wrote:

“I want to add that I believe we are raising boys here at Eureka Springs on this pure water who will have the brains for presidents. I often tell people that I have made it possible for them to raise children here by killing the bears and other wild animals. Now in my old days I have the pleasure of seeing so many nice healthy children that I feel repaid for all that I’ve gone through, and sincerely hope that my efforts have not been in vain.”[16]

The late Amos J. Fortner was brought to Eureka Springs by his parents in 1882. He was a young lad with his body twisted with infantile paralysis. Here is his story:

“Life in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, was almost unbelievably crude in the early days of 1882 and 1883, three or four years after the ‘healing springs’ were discovered by white men, and the place became a mushroom city of five or six thousand people almost overnight. No water works, no sewer system, no paved streets, no street cars and, of course, no automobiles.

“My first memories of the town that was destined to become the leading health resort of the Ozarks are of gangs of men drilling and blasting on the side of the mountain to change Spring street in the vicinity of Sweet and Harding springs. Previous to that time Sweet Spring was in a little hollow far below its present location and almost exactly underneath a high foot-bridge which spanned the ravine. The bridge permitted a short cut from the Crescent Springs district to the down-town area. Somehow they were able to locate the underground flow of water and bring it out to the present street level. Then, of course, the original Sweet Spring went bone dry. I rather believe they relocated the Harding Spring also, but I am not sure of this. So it happens that the convenient locations of some of the springs on Spring street are not entirely the work of nature.

“In after years I often saw crowds of people waiting their turns to fill their pails with the good water from Sweet, Harding and Crescent Springs. These scenes would give a new and vivid meaning to a picture on one of the cards I received at Sunday School: ‘Women waiting at the well.’ I would use my childish imagination and wonder if an angel was hidden in some dim corner by the bath house to ‘trouble the water’ so that the people who came to bathe could receive miraculous healing.

“Property values in those days were based considerably on the proximity to some good spring. Consequently the homes of the well-to-do people were not located on the hill-tops but on the lower levels where water was plentiful and easy to obtain. We poor folks lived higher up on the hill where rent was cheaper. Generally, we didn’t have to pay any rent at all, but, of course, we had to carry our water a long ways and up the steep hillside.

“I recall that my brother, who had an inventive turn of mind, built a rolling water keg so that he could ‘horse’ the water up the mountain side and not have to carry it. My sister and I would frequently help him pull the keg up the steep places on the trail. But living that way on the very tip-top of Eureka’s sun-kissed hills had its compensations. We, the poorest of the poor, did actually ‘look down’ on the poor rich people on the lower levels.

“Another advantage of living high up on the hill was the wonderful view. My brother some how got hold of an old Civil War telescope about three feet long and we would look through it and count the chickens in the yards on East Mountain. I would sometimes lie for hours on my stomach in our little yard and travel far away among the pines and cedars growing on the distant ridges. One time I saw a boy and girl sitting together on a distant hillside with their arms around each other and when they kissed I almost passed out for I was only seven or eight years old at the time. I saw other things through that old telescope that I should not have witnessed at my age, but let’s skip that. Many happy hours did I spend with the old ‘seeing eye’ and I am quite sure that my passionate love for Nature stems from the beautiful things I saw through it from Crescent Hill.

“The city of Eureka Springs owes a great deal of its picturesque and rugged beauty to one man—Powell C. Clayton. He had a vigorous program of creating beauty out of a medley array of tumbledown shacks that dotted the hillsides. Of course, he made enemies with some property owners. Property values were certainly low at that time. My father bought one of the old-time houses and three city lots for $100, paying $5 down and $2 a month. Previous to that time we had lived in at least ten different houses during a five year period. Not one of these houses had a stone or cement foundation except along one edge which rested on the hillside. Usually the building was supported by spindly wood posts, the length determined by the steepness of the hillside. Some of these houses were so high from the ground that we could walk around underneath without bumping our heads. One of them had a southern exposure and it was so high off the ground that the sunshine would reach back far underneath. My mother took advantage of this spot for early spring garden, planting radishes, onions and lettuce. A little later cornfield beans were planted and trained up the posts that supported the house. That year we were eating garden vegetables some weeks earlier than any other family living in northern Arkansas.

“We had to move frequently. The house we lived in would be condemned and an official city demolition crew would tear it down. But always Mr. Clayton would tell my parents of some other house in which we could live, rent free, until it came time to tear it down, then we would move again. At one time when my father was out of town, Mr. Clayton even paid the expenses of our moving. But he was in a hurry that time. He wanted to immediately start clearing the ground for the erection of the Crescent Hotel and our shack was on the spot where the hotel was to be built. Oh how I hated to leave that hilltop!

“The lumber salvaged from the town was not wasted. Many car-loads of used lumber were shipped to western Kansas to build houses and barns for the pioneer families of that region. Many a woman, I have been told, stood at the door of her sod-shanty and wept tears of joy when she saw the ‘old man’ coming with a big wagon load of second-hand pine lumber from Eureka Springs.

“Why a lad of six or seven years should remember these things I will never understand but, nevertheless, they are true.

“I have always thought that the building of the street car system was a civic blunder, but I may be wrong. And I am even more positive in my opinion that the coming of the automobile age was a great calamity to Eureka Springs.... Now, wait a minute before you call me crazy!

“In 1879 the ‘Healing Spring Country’ was a vast uninhabited wilderness where timber wolves prowled and howled and froze the blood in the veins of their waiting victims, and foxes had their dens in the caves and crevices along the hillside. Many a ‘big bad wolf’ slacked his thirst at Basin Spring and perhaps cured himself of his mangy ills. (Some ‘wolves’ do that now, I am told.) In just two years the wild animals had to take to the bushes to make room for five thousand people who had poured in to make their homes at the springs.