Saratoga Springs

When I was discussing on this blog a year or so ago the mineral water craze that sprang up in the Ozarks (and elsewhere) during the 1880s, I think Saratoga Springs, a town in McDonald County, Missouri, was among the examples I cited. Recently, while perusing the 1881 Joplin Daily Herald, I ran across a column written by a reporter who had taken a trip from Joplin to the fledgling community of Saratoga Springs in the late summer of 1881. The reporter said there were, at the time of his visit, two grocery stores and a drug store in the town as well as three or four dozen "summer houses" made of native lumber. Four or five springs flowed from a ravine below the town, but no medical qualities were claimed for even the largest of the group, which was dubbed the "Liz Weaver." In additon, the community had no organized town company or leaders working on behalf of building the place up. So, the reporter held out little hope that the town would flourish, and, of course, he turned out to be right. Today, Saratoga (the "Springs" part has been dropped from the name) is barely a wide place in the road on Highway 90 between Noel and Southwest City.
One place that did prosper, though, was Eureka Springs. It was tremendously popular, at least among Joplin citizens, from its very founding. It amazes me, in reading 1880s Joplin newspapers, how often I run into items reporting that a certain citizen was in Eureka Springs or had just returned from there. And I'm sure Eureka Springs was almost as popular with other residents of the Ozarks as it was with Joplinites.

Eureka Springs Bank Robbery

Henry Starr, as I pointed out last time, was killed in a bank robbery at Harrison, Arkansas, in February of 1921. The rest of the gang escaped, but apparently they didn't learn much from the fatal outcome of the crime. A year and a half later, in September of 1922, the attempted holdup of a bank in Eureka Springs ended even worse for the remnants of the gang than the Harrison caper had. Local citizens armed themselves when they realized a crime was in progress, and three of the gang members were killed and the other two wounded and captured in the ensuing shootout. Commenting on the downfall of the gang, some people have pointed to various mistakes the robbers made, such as the fact that they chose a difficult target with few easy escape routes and the fact that they brought along a raw, inexperienced kid as the driver of the getaway car. There is little doubt that the gang was pretty inept, but the main mistake they made was not taking into account the determined resistance the townspeople put up. As one newspaperman pointed out at the time, maybe they didn't realize they were in Arkansas, and standing idly by while their bank was getting robbed was not how they did things in Arkansas back then.
I recently had an article in The Ozarks Mountaineer about the failed Eureka Springs bank robbery, and you can also read a version of the story in my book about notorious Ozarks incidents, which, by the way, I've finally received a copy of. So, it should be available in bookstores very soon if it isn't already. I thought it was going to be out long before now, but the wheels always turn slowly in the publishing world and sometimes even more slowly than others.

Eldorado Springs

During the late 1800s, many towns sprang up in the Ozarks and, indeed, all across the country, at the site of mineral springs, which were thought to have curative powers. In our region, these communities were concentrated in northwest Arkansas and in Missouri along the northern rim of the Ozarks. The area around Springfield and east of Springfield, because of a preponderance of pure water, had comparatively few towns founded because of mineral springs.
Probably the most famous town in the Ozarks that was founded at the site of a mineral spring is Eureka Springs, but there were many others, some of which no longer even exist and others of which are now mere wide places in the road.
Another comparatively well-known town that was founded because of its mineral water and that is still a prospering little town today is Eldorado Springs, in Cedar County, Missouri. People were already coming great distances to drink the water at the site of Eldorado Springs for its supposed medicinal value when the Cruce brothers, Nathanial and Waldo, platted the town in July of 1881. By December of the same year, the town had already grown to a population of about 500 people, and by 1896 Eldorado Springs was home to almost 3,000 people.
Most people no longer believe in the curative powers of spring water, but a lot of the towns that sprang up back when most people did believe are still in existence. If you know of a town with the word "springs" on the end of its name, chances are it was probably founded during the spring water craze of the late 1880s.