Let us entertain you
In 1921, El Dorado, a midsouth town of 3,500, started living up to its Spanish name, “The Golden;” but 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, and South Arkansas would never be the same.
These thousands of newcomers were an assorted lot. They consisted of oil field workers, illicit stock promoters and, naturally, ladies of the night.
The area due south of the Courthouse, from Main Street south, 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 into town, and as the boomtown exploded with money, the row of gambling houses, brothels and saloons packed both sides of the street.
An oilfield worker, in an interview, called walking down Hamburger Row, “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 a baby blanket 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 also lined the road, such as the Randolph (home of the fabulous and naughty Petroleum Club with its hidden back door entrance); the Garrett, where stock brokers 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 barrels of oil a day.
The new hotels were also entertainment centers, featuring some of the top swing and jazz bands in the country. These hotels were packed and their stages featured stars from Broadway, Chicago and, of course, New Orleans.
The old Rialto Theater, which originally seated 400, had a vaudeville stage and sold out shows starting at 9 a.m. They 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, and the entertainment went off the wall. Big bands blew into town and jazz groups came up from New Orleans. As the oil boom flooded south Arkansas with money, the entertainers came along with it.
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 was Hill’s Recreation Center.
New theaters were constructed, and sold out with everything from the top movies to national opera singers and a raft of other performers. Before the boom settled down out in the 1950s, El Dorado boasted 10 movie theaters and three drive-in theaters.
Beginning with the 1920s oil boom, El Dorado has always been an entertainment destination, and today, with the new focus on entertainment, it is about to reclaim that title.
The new Murphy Arts District — MAD — has completed Phase One of its development, which included the construction of an amphitheater that holds 8,000 to 10,000 folks. Entertainers such as 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 inside the restaurant are filling up with a variety of superstars such as Ashley McBryde.
But that’s not all this 10 Minute Town with benefits has to offer.
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 just a very short walk away.
There is a lot more on the way and when MAD’s Phase Two is completed. El Dorado will have a four-floor art museum, and Arkansas’s Last Grand Theater will be renovated into a Broadway type theater venue.
It was Roger Brooks, a destination expert, who came up with the concept to make El Dorado an entertainment destination again, and 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 like the Haywood and the Guest Quarters, the addition of venues ranging from an 8,000 capacity amphitheater, to local small venues, along with music halls, art museums, a symphony orchestra, Oil Heritage Park and an award-winning downtown, this 10 Minute Town with benefits will take its place in the country as one of the top regional entertainment centers. So take a getaway-from-it-all trip, and let us entertain you.