Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Wonderland Cave served as shelter during Cold War
BELLA VISTA — In a culture of fear and paranoia, people prepared for the worst and sought safety where they could, and locally people readied Wonderland Cave to weather the unthinkable.
The Wonderland Cave alongside Dartmoor Road has filled a few roles over the past century-and-a-half or so, allegedly providing a hiding spot for the infamous Jesse James and other outlaws, serving as a bar and club off and on and, more recently, a vandalism target, as well as a bomb shelter in the 1960s as officials worked to create public shelters across the country.
According to research from the Rogers Historical Museum, Wonderland wasn’t the only cave used — the Spanish Treasure Cave near Gravette and Civil War Cave near Centerton were both outfitted as shelters as well.
An undated newspaper clipping at the Bella Vista Historical Museum, written by Evelyn Shade and titled
“Wonderland Cave designated as fallout shelter by Civil Defense,” said the cave was one of a few designated shelters in Northwest Arkansas after “careful surveys were made.”
According to the article, an announcement was expected from the Office of Civil Defense once food and supplies were set up in the cave.
The article notes the cave’s walls had been unmoved over centuries, despite more recently hosting bands, parties, religious groups, conventions, weddings and the state legislature. And despite its designation as a shelter, the article noted the cave would remain open to tourists.
Another undated clipping, titled “Fallout shelters needed CD director indicates,” with no photo caption, indicated the state only had shelter for roughly 10% of its population — and that was with fairly generous estimate indicating the Wonderland Cave could hold 2,000 people.
Officials suggested the public work and advocate to help ensure the issue was addressed, according to the article, and build essential skills such as medical self-help.
In his 2011 book, Fallout Shelter: Designing for Civil Defense in the Cold War, David Monteyne wrote a
United States public, fearing escalation after the 1961 Berlin crisis and the 1962 Cuban missile crisis with the devastation in Hiroshima and Nagasaki still in mind, let its imagination run wild with possibilities.
Experts tried to predict what could happen, where bombs might fall, how the public could react and what could be done to mitigate this disaster — and shelters were an obvious answer, he wrote.
Urban centers seemed like the most obvious targets and two primary strategies, urban dispersal and bomb shelters were the primarily pitched strategies, with a great deal of overlap, according to the book — though it asserts these efforts were in part to fuel the idea that nuclear war was both guaranteed and survivable.
These efforts — focused on evading attack from a foreign other — used an abstract for a citizen largely based on the engineers themselves and the result prioritized white suburbanites rather than seeking to maximize the people potentially protected.
“In an imagination of urban disaster and suburban survival, the fear of the bomb and the fear of the racial other merged at ground zero,” Monteyne wrote.
It’s worth noting there was some disagreement among professionals about potential targets — while the post World War II U.S. saw and participated in urban reconstruction throughout Europe and the image of cities destroyed and rebuilt was heavily imprinted in the public’s mind, several experts argued attacks would likely prioritize military and industrial targets over population centers, according to the book.
Regardless of the location or the target, the notion of digging — or finding a dug — fallout shelter such as the Wonderland Cave was a hot topic across the country.
In 2004’s One Nation Underground: The Fallout Shelter in American Culture, Kenneth D. Rose writes members of the public at all social strata in communities of all sizes were involved in the discussion.
Rose said nuclear disaster was often described in terms similar to natural disasters the public was likely to be more familiar with, but the prospect of nuclear fallout meant sheltering in place would need to be a longer-term process compared to sheltering for a tornado.
Shelters emblematic of a time where American and Soviet citizens alike spent their days fearing nuclear war have become an object of nostalgia, with many — including a previously secret bunker at Greenbrier resort in West Virginia — open for tours, according to the book.
Wonderland Cave continued use as a night club for some time after its brief stint as a shelter, and today sits closed and sealed.
The 27-acres where it’s located sold last year for $750,000 to Dartmoor Road LLC, but no plans have been announced to reopen the cave for tours or any other purpose.