Eureka Springs Historic District

Eureka Springs was formally founded on July 4, 1879, when Levi Best Saunders built the first house. The Osage claimed northern Arkansas as hunting ground until they ceded it to the United States in 1825, and Osage hunting parties likely drank at the springs. Stories of Native leaders sharing the water with settlers have no historical foundation. Dr. Alvah Jackson is said to have found the springs in 1856, though accounts of his eye water and cave hospital are claims, not verified history. The population peaked at 3,984 in 1880 and was 2,166 in 2020.

A railroad reached the town in 1883, and the Crescent Hotel opened in May 1886 for the Eureka Improvement Company, founded by former governor Powell Clayton. It became Crescent College for young women from 1908 to 1924, and in the 1930s Norman Baker ran a cancer hospital there that closed after his 1940 mail fraud conviction. A Black community with its own schools and an African Methodist Episcopal church grew up during the tourism boom and disappeared when tourism declined. Local writers report that two Black children in the 1940s were denied entry to the city's schools, and the last known resident of that community died in 1975.

The district was listed on the National Register on December 18, 1970, and enlarged in 1979 to take in the depot. The city's 230 streets follow the hills, and none meet at a right angle. Basin Spring Park, at the south end, is built around the spring the town began with.