Eureka Springs, Arkansas has welcomed visitors for hundreds of years. Legends of several tribes spoke of a Great Healing Spring in the mountains of what later became known as "Arkansas." Early visitors believed this spring to be Basin Spring itself, and the magical waters drew the afflicted in such numbers that Eureka Springs transformed from an isolated wilderness to a flourishing city in a few short months.

"There is a story, very popular with the health-seekers camped around the spring they called The Basin, that Sioux Indians brought the young daughter of a great Chieftan to the Spring in search of healing. She suffered from an eye affliction which had taken away her sight, and the people were deeply saddened that such a fate should befall their beloved little princess. The young girl bathed her eyes in the waters, and within a short time her eyesight was fully restored, to the great joy of her people who told the story far and wide until it reached the ears of the first white men exploring the region."

The first white settler to "discover" the healing springs is reputed to be Dr. Alvah Jackson, who used the healing waters to cure his son of an eye ailment in 1856. The waters were used at "Dr. Jackson's Cave Hospital" to care for combatants during the Civil War and, following the war, Dr. Jackson set up a brisk business selling "Dr. Jackson's Eye Water."

Eureka's miraculous cures remained a local marvel until 1879 when the doctor's friend and hunting companion Judge J.B. Saunders was cured of a crippling disease by a visit to Basin Spring, and subsequently put his considerable influence behind promoting the Springs to friends and family throughout the state.

The City of Eureka Springs was founded and named on July 4, 1879. As word of Eureka's miraculous, healing waters began to spread, thousands of visitors flocked to the original encampment of tents and hastily built shanties.

By late 1879, the estimated population of Eureka Springs reached 10,000 people and in 1881, the town was declared a "City of the First Class," the fourth largest city in Arkansas.

"The location of the city is the last one in the world which would ordinarily have been chosen. The impossibility of presenting a striking and vivid picture of Eureka Springs has been fully realized by every person who has made the attempt, and the most powerful descriptive writer would rise from the task dissatisfied with the best efforts of his pen. To group and present a few of its most prominent features would utterly fail to do justice to a city without parallel--unique, phenomenal, picturesque and beautiful."

The Eureka Springs Improvement Company was formed in 1882 to bring the railroad to the city and to develop amenities to service the growing visitor population. The involvement of the ESIC secured Eureka's position as one of the premier resorts of the Victorian era. Thousands of residences and commercial structures were built in two short years. These structures still exist today--so rigorously preserved that the entire town of Eureka Springs is on the National Register of Historic Places.