SULPHUR SPRINGS -- This town in northwest Benton County is disappearing, but its inhabitants aren't giving up on its future just yet.
Cities in Benton and Washington counties almost doubled on average in their respective populations from 2000 to 2015, according to Census estimates, with Centerton and other smaller cities leading the charge. Sulphur Springs, meanwhile, tumbled from almost 700 people to an estimated 377, the smallest it has been since about 1900, when tourists flocked here hoping to cure ailments with the city's mineral-laced spring water.
The population drop makes Sulphur Springs unique among the metropolitan area's roughly two-dozen member cities. Winslow in Washington County also lost people, but the township that includes the city and its surroundings made gains.
Yet several Sulphur Springs residents agreed that the town is full of potential thanks to its other unique traits, such as the 20-acre park that includes the original springs and dominates the center of town, and the commitment and zeal of the community to turn things around.
"We are a little town, we're struggling, but we're making it and we're improving," Sulphur Springs Mayor Shane Weber said.
Sulphur Springs began in the late 1800s much like the state's more famous Eureka Springs and Hot Springs. A railroad dropped off hundreds of visitors per day who stayed at more than a dozen boarding houses and hotels at the town's peak, said June Murray, who is a member of the City Council and community museum commission.
Within living memory, the town had two gas stations, and Sunday afternoon would bring baseball games in the pastures. The largest hotels, where John Brown University had its start, bustled for decades with the Shiloh Christian community and bakery. Several residents described it as Mayberry, the fictional town in The Andy Griffith Show. One side of Gov. Asa Hutchinson's family is from here.
"It was home," said Murray, a retired schoolteacher who still lives in town. "Everyone knew everyone; no one locked their doors."
The sense of community and rural living is still around, but the gas stations have left and instead set up in nearby Gravette. Several houses are boarded up or dilapidated. Downtown is little more than the fire station, a laundromat and an air and water company. The old hotels stand empty up on the hill.
The volunteer-run library at City Hall held a fundraiser in February and lost money, said Sandy Shook, library commissioner. She blamed the town's losses partly on its isolated location just south of Missouri. Others pointed to drug use or contentious small-town politics several years back.
Size, at least, isn't to blame by itself. Goshen was home to a similar population as Sulphur Springs in 2000 and doubled that by 2015. Bethel Heights, nestled between Lowell and Springdale, started around the same size and quadrupled.
Whatever the causes, Sulphur Springs is pushing back. Police Chief Duke Brackney said drug use has gone way down since he joined the department in 2013 and the four-person department has become more active.
Weber pointed with pride to a new jungle gym, cleared fields and other improvements at the park that are being done with mostly volunteer work or government grants. The town is hosting its fourth-annual Sulphur Days, an Independence Day celebration in late June that draws hundreds of people to the park's fields and crystal-clear creek.
"We're trying to outdo Gravette," joked Ron Driskell, a retiree who wore a light-colored cowboy hat over his white hair as he mowed the grass around the spring pumps in his free time. He volunteers, he said bluntly, "because I live here."
Driskell is a newcomer, moving in about two years ago from Hiwasse. Weber moved with his family from Arizona about five years ago, drawn to the green woods and quiet life. Some say the Bella Vista Bypass for Interstate 49, which will swing near Sulphur Springs once completed, could give the town another boost, and a new restaurant is expected soon downtown.
Part of the road is open, and Missouri Department of Transportation officials have said finishing their portion of the bypass has been made a priority.
Residents widely agree the town needs more businesses and jobs most of all. Many look to the former hotels, where the Shiloh Community ran an organic food business and religious ministry until it gradually shut down since the 2000s.
State Rep. Kim Hendren, R-Gravette, said he and his wife bought the 30 acres last fall for about $450,000 and hope to reopen the properties as an event-and-ministry center and day care. Hendren's son Jim, a state senator, lives just outside Sulphur Springs, and the Hendrens' plastics company started here.
"You can see there's some work to do, but, boy, it's exciting, because it has such possibilities," the elder Hendren said as he gave a tour around the largest hotel building, a barn gymnasium and a community center on the property.
He has cleared old trees and brush and cleaned out the pool and paths, and he envisions restoring the three-story hotel's tower and roof, cleaning up and renovating its interior and perhaps opening a manufacturing space on its bottom floor.
"I'm just an old, sentimental man," Hendren said, calling the work a retirement project. "God's not through with this deal yet, he's really not."
Anna Lee Janisch, whose late husband was Shiloh's pastor, said the community came to an end because its members died or moved away. She didn't mind, comparing the closing to an old tree that falls when it's time and then supports new growth. Kim Hendren had offered to buy the property the day before her husband died and was the answer to their prayers, Janisch said.
All of these changes together will change the town's course, said Larry Burge, who was raised in town and volunteers for the museum and newly formed parks commission.
"I would say within five years it'll be a whole different area here," he said. "We're not going to let it go down."
Metro on 04/17/2017