Tucked high in the Ozarks is a town with 140 bubbling springs, a glass chapel, and vintage Victorian buildings

Arkansas’s strangest little city

Eureka Springs sits in the Ozark Mountains of northwest Arkansas, about 35 miles west of Rogers, and nothing about it follows the rules. The streets curve and climb with almost no right-angle intersections.

Buildings sit so deep into the hillsides that you can walk into the ground floor on one side and the second floor on the other.

About 2,300 people call it home, but the town punches well above its size with preserved Victorian architecture, a glass chapel in the woods, and a big cat sanctuary down the road.

10,000 people showed up before the town turned one

Natural springs in the area caught attention as early as the 1850s, when Dr. Alvah Jackson found water he believed had healing power. Word spread fast.

The town got its name on July 4, 1879, and by the end of that year, about 10,000 people had poured in. By 1881, Eureka Springs ranked as the fourth largest city in Arkansas.

Former governor Powell Clayton brought railroad access in the 1880s and built it into a resort town.

When modern medicine moved past the spring water cures in the early 1900s, people left, but the buildings stayed right where they were.

Hundreds of Victorian buildings line the steep streets

Downtown landed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1970, and for good reason.

You’re looking at the largest collection of Victorian architecture in the central United States, with hundreds of buildings from the 1880s to early 1900s still standing.

More than 20 styles show up here, from Queen Anne to Romanesque Revival to Italianate. Stone retaining walls built between 1885 and 1910 still hold houses against the steep hillsides.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation named it one of America’s Distinctive Destinations.

A 48-foot glass chapel in the middle of the woods

Arkansas architect E. Fay Jones, who apprenticed under Frank Lloyd Wright, designed Thorncrown Chapel and finished it in 1980. The structure stands 48 feet tall with 425 windows and more than 6,000 square feet of glass.

Jones set one rule for the build: no material could be larger than what two men could carry through the forest. He wanted the woods left alone.

The American Institute of Architects ranked it the fourth-best building of the 20th century. You can walk in for free and sit as long as you like.

The Crescent Hotel went from resort to fake hospital

Locally quarried limestone went into the 1886 Crescent Hotel at a cost of about $294,000, which runs over $10 million in today’s dollars.

It opened as a luxury resort, then became the Crescent College and Conservatory for Young Women from 1908 to 1924. Then things got strange.

In 1937, Norman Baker bought the place and ran it as a hospital where he claimed to cure cancer. He was convicted of mail fraud in 1940.

Today the hotel operates as a resort again, and you can take nightly guided tours through every chapter of its past.

Rescued tigers and lions roam 459 acres

Seven miles south of town, Turpentine Creek Wildlife Refuge spreads across 459 acres where rescued big cats live in large natural habitats.

Don and Hilda Jackson and their daughter Tanya Smith founded the nonprofit in 1992, and since then, the refuge has taken in more than 600 animals pulled from abuse, neglect, and the exotic pet trade.

Tigers, lions, leopards, cougars, bobcats, and bears all live here now. The Global Federation of Animal Sanctuaries has verified the operation.

You can hop on a guided tram tour and walk through the discovery area to hear each animal’s story.

A seven-story statue on top of Magnetic Mountain

The Christ of the Ozarks stands seven stories tall on Magnetic Mountain and weighs about two million pounds.

Workers finished it in 1966, layering 24 coats of white mortar over a steel frame that sits on 340 tons of concrete. You can visit the statue for free any time of year.

On the same grounds, the Great Passion Play runs on select nights from spring through early November, an outdoor drama depicting the last days of Jesus.

The property also holds a Bible Museum, a Holy Land Tour with replicas of biblical sites, and a piece of the Berlin Wall.

She tore down her own house to force a new one

Elise Quigley wanted a new home on the family’s 80-acre farm south of town. Her husband kept stalling.

So in 1943, she and her children ripped down their old lumber shack while he was at work. Construction started after that.

She designed a two-story open space between the walls and floors where tropical plants grow straight from bare earth up to the ceiling.

The outside is covered in rocks, crystals, fossils, and arrowheads she collected since childhood. More than 100 rock sculptures and 400 varieties of perennials fill the grounds.

The house hit the National Register of Historic Places in 2003, and the Quigley family’s descendants still run tours from spring through fall.

487 miles of shoreline and 50 miles of trails

Beaver Lake covers 28,370 acres with 487 miles of shoreline cut into limestone bluffs, and about 4.2 million people visit its recreation areas each year.

The lake draws bass anglers from across the country, and you can also kayak, swim, boat, or scuba dive. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers runs 12 parks around the water with campgrounds, boat ramps, and beaches.

Inside town, Lake Leatherwood City Park gives you 1,600 acres, an 85-acre spring-fed lake, more than 50 miles of trails, and the largest hand-laid limestone dam in the country.

Live opera, magic shows, and folk music downtown

Galleries, studios, and live music venues fill the downtown streets, and the town keeps a festival calendar that runs all year.

The Ozark Folk Festival is one of the oldest continuously running folk festivals in the country. Opera in the Ozarks at Inspiration Point, founded in 1950, stages a summer season each year.

If you want something different, Intrigue Theater puts on live magic and mentalism shows in a small downtown space.

Old-style motorized trolleys loop through town with stops at locations everywhere, so you can leave the car parked and ride from one end to the other.

Spring Street curves along a bluff past the original spring

Spring Street is the main road downtown, bending along a high bluff past shops, galleries, cafes, and pocket parks built around natural springs.

Basin Spring Park sits right in the middle of it all, centered on the spring that started everything. Stone stairways cut between street levels throughout town, and locals use them as shortcuts.

If you want to go farther out, the Eureka Springs and North Arkansas Railway runs scenic trips on a 1940s diesel locomotive through four miles of Ozark countryside, typically May through October.

Onyx Cave, about 10 miles away, stays 57 degrees year-round and you can walk through it on your own.

140 cold springs and ziplines through the hills

More than 140 natural springs run through town, every one of them cold water.

Beyond the springs, zipline courses cut through the surrounding mountains, and you can book off-road tours or horseback rides through the hills.

The Kings River and the White River are both close enough for a day of kayaking or canoeing. When fall hits, the Ozark hardwoods turn red, orange, and gold across every ridge in sight.

Eureka Springs keeps handing you reasons to stay another day, no matter what brought you in the first place.

Explore Eureka Springs in northwest Arkansas

You can reach Eureka Springs through U.S. Route 62 or Arkansas Highway 23.

The town sits in Carroll County, about 50 miles east of Bentonville and roughly four hours by car from Little Rock.

If you’re flying in, Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport in Bentonville/Fayetteville is about 45 miles away. Once you arrive, the trolley system covers most of town, so you can park and forget about your car.

Check the official website for seasonal hours and event schedules before you go.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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