Tough row to hoe

Historic portion of hotel to come down

William Hope “Coin” Harvey, years before his ill-fated, Northwest Arkansas-based campaign for president the year Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected, dreamed of an elaborate resort west of Rogers. Having moved to the region in 1900, he actually built parts of it.

He renamed the area Monte Ne.

Had Harvey succeeded in turning his vision into reality, a 130-foot-tall pyramid would sit at the shoreline of what today is Beaver Lake. This eccentric man became convinced the world would not sustain itself and would be destroyed. His pyramid, according to his plans, would be filled with items — books, newspapers, an automobile, a Victrola and other items of his age — so that a future civilization could find them and learn lessons that might improve their odds of survival.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers may be glad Harvey never got his pyramid built. They’ve got enough headaches with just the remnants of a hotel Harvey built and operated for several years.

The corps operates Beaver Lake, which was completed in 1966, and controls a certain amount of the land making up its shorelines. Not far from the shore today stands one of the few remaining structures connecting the present to Coin Harvey’s eclectic legacy.

Monte Ne gets a lot of attention when Beaver Lake’s level drops and the amphitheater Harvey built is exposed by the receding waters. It’s like a visit to a hidden piece of an Ozarkian Atlantis. Nearby, a concrete tower once anchored a log structure known as Oklahoma Row, one of Harvey’s hotels. In 2023, more than 100 years after it was built, that tower still looms. It’s a bit of Northwest Arkansas history residents used to be able to touch, not unlike an old Harry Potter-style portkey that could transport you to another place.

We can remember a visit to the Oklahoma Row tower in 1998, when then-Rogers Mayor John Sampier and then-County Judge Clyde Cummings talked of transforming the long-neglected, graffiti-covered historic site into a walking path and museum devoted to Coin Harvey. A corps rep was there too, praising the partnership with the Rogers Historical Museum to do something meaningful with what remained of Harvey’s erratic times in the Ozarks.

None of it ever worked out and, in 2023, the corps says it’s time to give up on preservation. The tower has been fenced for years. A little more than a week ago the agency said crews will, sometime this next week, begin tearing down the tower because it’s become a threat to public safety.

As much as preservation is desirable, there comes a time when demolition remains the only option. People have tried for years to figure out a way to maintain the tower in some useful fashion, but no one has discovered a way to make it both useful and meaningful enough to attract funding.

The Shiloh Museum in Springdale, the Rogers Historical Museum and the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program are working together to preserve some piece of the tower. There is also hope some kind of interpretive historical marker can be installed at the site.

There are times that all you can do is all you can do. Coin Harvey discovered that harsh reality with his dreams of building his pyramid. Who knew a tower that anchored a hotel would be among the long-lasting links to an intriguing past? But no more.

Sometimes, history simply has to fade into history, as sad as that is. It’s amazing, really, that this vestige of Oklahoma Row didn’t come down sooner.