El Dorado revives its entertainment appeal
In 1921 El Dorado, population 3,500, started living up to its Spanish name, “The Golden.” Its gold was black.
A wild gusher of oil blew in on the edge of town, and by late 1923 over 100,000 new residents had flooded Union County, with 40,000 of them packed into El Dorado. South Arkansas would never be the same.
These newcomers were an assorted lot: oil field workers, illicit stock promoters, and ladies of the night. The area south of the courthouse from Main Street down Washington Avenue to the train station became known as Hamburger Row. It got its name because, with the lack of restaurants, hamburgers were cooked on sidewalk grills.
That area became the arrival point as 22 trains a day brought thousands more, and as the boom town exploded with money, rows of gambling houses, brothels and saloons packed both sides of the street.
An oilfield worker called walking down Hamburger Row as “a descent into hell.” However, it was a regional entertainment center, and by 1925 El Dorado had nearly every type of entertainment that was available.
H. L. Hunt, at one time the richest man in the world, got his start on Hamburger Row by operating a gambling house. According to several reports, his first words when he got off the train and saw the thousands of men around the train station were “Bring me a deck of cards and some poker chips.”
One of the boarding houses on the edge of town provided dolls wrapped in baby blankets to young ladies who were staying there to keep the men from harassing them. At the peak of the oil boom, Union County had an estimated 30 brothels, and that didn’t count the mobile ones that called on the drilling rigs. The last one voluntarily closed in 1968.
Hotels included the Randolph (home of the fabulous and naughty Petroleum Club with its hidden back door entrance), the Garrett, where stockbrokers set up a trading floor in the lobby to sell illicit stock in new wells, and the Central Hotel on Main Street, where self-proclaimed doctor and geologist Samuel Busey (he was neither) announced his oil discovery of “30,000 barrels of oil a day.”
That was a wild exaggeration, but it set off the boom, and during the next two years several large fields were discovered including the Smackover Field, which sent the boom into orbit with some wells that would produce over 50,000 bbls a day.
The new hotels featured some of the top swing and jazz bands in the country. Their stages featured stars from Broadway, Chicago and New Orleans. The Rialto Theater, which originally seated 400, had a vaudeville stage had sold out shows starting at 9 a.m. It featured entertainers from New York as well as the latest top “picture shows” from Hollywood.
The Rialto expanded to 1,500 seats in the late 1920s. Big bands blew into town, and jazz groups came from New Orleans as the oil boom flooded south Arkansas with money. The Howdy Club and juke joints in the St. Louis section of town also boomed, and if you wanted to shoot pool and party right next door to the Rialto Theater there was Hill’s Recreation Center.
New theaters sold out with everything from the top movies to national opera singers and other performers. Before the boom settled down in the 1950s, El Dorado boasted 10 movie theaters and three drive-in theaters.
Today, El Dorado is about to reclaim the title of entertainment destination. The new Murphy Arts District (MAD) has completed Phase One with the addition of an amphitheater which will hold 8,000 to 10,000. Willie Nelson and Hank Williams Jr. had crowds spilling out into the street. The First Financial Music Hall, the adjoining MAD House Restaurant, and the Cabaret are filling up with a variety of superstars such as Ashley McBryde.
For overnight visitors, the new Haywood Hotel and the Guest Quarters have top-quality lodging, and if you come to town with young kids, the largest Playscape in the state, along with a nearby ice skating rink, is a very short walk away. When Phase Two is completed, El Dorado will have a four-floor art museum, and Arkansas’ Last Grand Theater will be renovated into a Broadway-style venue.
Roger Brooks came up with the concept to make El Dorado an entertainment destination again, When all the pieces are in place, the city will take a page from the 1920s and repeat history. With the conference center, downtown hotels, the addition of venues along with music halls, art museums, a symphony, Oil Heritage Park, and an award-winning downtown, El Dorado will take its place as one of the country’s top regional entertainment centers.
So take a get-away-from-it-all trip, and let us entertain you.