GRISWOLDDAD
Parenting, Entertainment, and Travel Tips
Things to Do in Arkansas
To see Arkansas' top yearly events, click here.
Ok, there are a few states in our wonderful nation that you have to really research to find something fun to do (see Delaware!), and Arkansas is one of them. I mean, prior to a trip my family took that I titled, "Texarcanessee", my best knowledge of Arkansas came from an HBO documentary called "Banging in Little Rock" about all the gang activity there... so naturally, I avoided Little Rock. Thank you, HBO!
So, on to what I did find.
Eureka Springs
The "most haunted hotel in the United States" is in Eureka Springs. The Crescent Hotel was built in 1886 high up in the Ozark Mountains and has your normal amount of ghost stories from big places that have been in business for that long.
That would have been enough for them to run their nightly ghost tours, similar to what the Stanley Hotel in Colorado or the Bullock Hotel in Deadwood, South Dakota do...but what puts the Crescent over the top is that Norman Baker, a former magician and radio host bought the closed hotel and turned it into a "hospital" where he offered the cure for cancer! Naturally, he didn't have the cure. So, what do you do with screaming, dying patients as potential new patients show up ready to spend money? You can't have them hearing your failures. So, Norman set up an "insane asylum" as part of his hospital and moved them into there to explain the noises and crying away. A lot of people died. Hence, a lot more ghost stories!
Also, nearby to the hotel, you'll find high up on another hill the "Jesus of the Ozarks" statue which is reminiscent of the famous Rio statue.
Hot Springs
This actually turned out to be a beautiful and relaxing little town high up in the Ouachita Mountains. Thanks to its natural hot springs long believed to have medicinal properties, this town was a hot spot for the rich, famous, and infamous from the 1800s into the early to mid 1900s.
Al Capone even used the town as a hideout for a time. Major League Baseball used to go there for spring training because of the healing baths also. The bathhouses, better known as Bathhouse Row, is where these people all used to get their spa treatments. The bathhouses are still there and have been turned into a national park called Hot Springs National Park. You can tour some of them, and others are still open and functioning, so you can get your own spa treatments as well!
