Subiaco Abbey

Subiaco Abbey began as a colony. In November 1877 the Little Rock and Fort Smith Railroad Company offered land to Abbot Martin Marty of St. Meinrad Abbey in Indiana, for a Benedictine foundation to serve German-Catholic settlers coming to the western Arkansas River Valley. Three monks arrived in Logan County in March 1878, and by the end of that year nearly 150 families had settled in St. Benedict's Colony. Monks from Einsiedeln Abbey in Switzerland came to help. In 1891 Pope Leo XIII raised the priory to an abbey named Subiaco, and in 1892 it elected its first abbot, Ignatius Conrad.

Fire shaped the buildings. The original frame monastery about a mile away burned on December 15, 1901, by which time part of a new stone abbey of local Subiaco sandstone, begun in 1898, was almost ready. On December 20, 1927, fire destroyed three quarters of that building, and recovery was slow. The abbey church, in a modified Romanesque style, was begun in 1953 and consecrated by 1959, and its 125-foot bell tower rings every fifteen minutes. The Coury House Retreat Center opened in 1963.

Subiaco is also a boys' boarding school, so visitors are asked to show identification for a quick screening before they walk the grounds, and the church can be visited without it. Follow the signs to Coury House, register for a self-guided tour and take a brochure. The monks pray five times a day, and visitors may sit in the unlocked church to listen. A free guided tour runs Saturdays at 1 p.m. with 24 hours' notice.