Eccentrics of Eureka Springs

Some people come to Eureka Springs to shop and eat. Some come to hike, bike and paddle area streams. Some come to attend the Great Passion Play or visit Thorncrown Chapel.

I come to study the eccentrics. Nowhere else in Arkansas — with the possible exception of Hot Springs — has such a collection of charlatans, scoundrels and flimflam men. I enjoy reading about them and hanging out in places where they once hung out.

This is, after all, a resort first settled shortly before the Civil War by Dr. Alvah Jackson, who later would market a product known as Dr. Jackson’s Eye Water and set up a hospital called Dr. Jackson’s Cave Hospital.

Wounded soldiers came to Jackson for treatments with local spring water and remedies he had learned from Native Americans.

And let’s not forget the Eureka Baby. The 1880 discovery of what was said to be a fossilized human child in Eureka Springs wasn’t revealed as a hoax until 1948.

Abby Burnett writes for the Central Arkansas Library System’s Encyclopedia of Arkansas: “The find was exhibited locally and then around the state. Within a year, the carving — known variously as the Eureka Baby or Petrified Indian Baby — was exhibited in St. Louis, Galveston and New Orleans. It was reportedly en route to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington at the time of its disappearance.

“The hoax was the brainchild of Henry Johnson, a merchant from Scottsville in Pope County who closely modeled his deception on the nationally famous Cardiff Giant. This massive stone man was ‘ discovered’ in 1869 in Cardiff, N.Y., and publicly acknowledged as a hoax the following year in a lawsuit that pitted its originator against showman P.T. Barnum. In both the Cardiff and Eureka Springs hoaxes, stone likenesses were created by tombstone carvers, buried, and then unearthed by well diggers. Both made money for their owners.”

Newspapers across the country ran stories about the Eureka Baby. Among the skeptics was local historian L.J. Kalklosch, who called it a “humbug.”

“Johnson had the means and connections to undertake such a scam, as he was related to Marcus Lafayette Kelly, a Fayetteville tombstone carver,” Burnett writes. “Kelly created an 85-pound, 26-inch-long statue of a child, which was later encased in a thick coating of clay and ash, aging the marble to a mottled blue-gray color.

“Around the time it was being carved, Thomas Campbell of Pope County and J.B. Hallum of Texas arrived in Eureka Springs. Hallum bought a piece of land near town and hired Campbell to dig a well on it. On Oct. 1, working alone, Campbell supposedly dug up the baby at a depth of four feet.”

By 1880, thousands of people were pouring into Eureka Springs, drawn by advertisements about the curative powers of water from its springs. Many visitors were willing to pay to see the latest attraction.

“Johnson (who established his claim by supposedly buying a share in the baby’s ownership), Hallum and Campbell charged 10 cents to view the find, later raising the rate to 35 cents,” Burnett writes. “Within three months, having exhausted local interest, the men took their creation to Clarksville and Russellville before selling out to two Little Rock investors for a reported $4,600. The baby changed owners again over the course of its travels.”

Johnson, Hallum and Campbell were dead by 1948 when T.J. Rowbotham gave an interview to the Arkansas Democrat, telling the true story of the Eureka Baby. Rowbotham’s brother had lived in Eureka Springs in 1880 and rented a room to Johnson. Hallum was Rowbotham’s brother-in-law. Rowbotham revealed that Johnson and Kelley were related by marriage.

Powell Clayton, the ninth governor of Arkansas, might not have been a charlatan, but he certainly was a colorful, controversial character who had an impact on Eureka Springs.

A Pennsylvania native, Clayton joined the Union Army in May 1861 after having moved to Kansas to work as a surveyor. He was promoted to colonel and commanded a cavalry brigade during the July 4, 1863, Battle of Helena.

The following August and September, Clayton’s regiment accompanied Gen. Frederick Steele’s forces in the campaign against Little Rock. Clayton, who received a promotion to brigadier general on Aug. 1, 1864, purchased a plantation near Pine Bluff and settled there with his brothers when the war ended. The brothers eventually accumulated more than 40,000 acres.

Clayton participated in the formation of the Arkansas Republican Party during Reconstruction. He was elected governor and was inaugurated on July 2, 1868. In January 1871, the Legislature elected him to the U.S. Senate. Clayton refused the seat. He was elected again by legislators in March, headed to Washington and remained there until March 1877. By then, Democrats controlled the Legislature.

“After his defeat for re-election, Clayton returned to Little Rock, practiced law and supported general economic development,” writes historian Carl Moneyhon of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. “In 1882, he moved to Eureka Springs, where he speculated in land as president of Eureka Improvement Co., which encouraged construction of a railroad and the building of the Crescent Hotel.”

The large hotel, advertised as America’s most opulent resort, was completed in 1886. Clayton’s company purchased 27 acres of wooded land, hired a well-known architect from St. Louis, and used a crew of Irish workers to bring back 18-inch-thick stones from a limestone quarry on the White River. The stones were hauled to the construction site by trains and specially constructed wagons.

The Crescent was sold in 1925, sold again in 1929, and finally purchased in 1937 by Norman Baker, perhaps the most infamous of all the Eureka Springs eccentrics. He operated a “hospital” out of the Crescent during the final years of the Great Depression.

Baker had been a fixture on the vaudeville circuit in the early 1900s. He started a radio station in Iowa in 1925 with the call letters KTNT, which stood for Know The Naked Truth.

Baker also published TNT Magazine. He used the magazine and radio station to attack established medical procedures and the American Medical Association. President Herbert Hoover helped launch Baker’s tabloid newspaper in 1930 by participating in a publicity stunt in which the president pushed a “golden key” in Washington to “start” Baker’s printing press in Iowa.

Though he had no formal education, he called himself Dr. Baker. He opened a hospital in Iowa where he claimed he could cure cancer. When the federal government shut down his radio station, Baker headed to Mexico to operate station XENT just across the U.S. border. After buying the Crescent, Baker took up where he had left off in Iowa, opening the Baker Hospital and Health Resort.

The hotel lobby was remodeled and painted bright purple with geometric designs on the walls. Baker was arrested for mail fraud in 1939, and the hotel closed. His trial was held in January 1940 in federal court at Little Rock, and Baker was found guilty of all seven counts. His appeal was denied, and Baker was sent to Leavenworth in Kansas to serve out his term. He was released in July 1944, moving to Florida and living there until his death in 1958.

In his book “Pure Hoax: The Norman Baker Story,” Stephen Spence writes: “What made Baker’s cancer cure charade so despicable is the human cost of his fraud. Hundreds of people who might have lived if they received legitimate medical care died because they put their trust in his cure. The common grifter swindles people out of their money. But only a monster would do so at the cost of their last chance of survival.”

The Crescent fell into disrepair and wasn’t reopened until July 4, 1946. Following an extensive renovation, it was advertised as the “Castle in the Air, High Atop the Ozarks.”