OPINION

REX NELSON: Spring on the Spring

It's breakfast time at the Olde Stonehouse Bed & Breakfast Inn on Main Street in Hardy, and innkeeper Vickie Rice is talking about the town she fell in love with after moving to Arkansas from Ohio.

The homemade biscuits are hot, the eggs are cooked perfectly and I listen intently as Rice talks. She serves on the Hardy City Council and the Advertising and Promotion Commission, and she's determined to find replacements for several restaurants that have closed in recent years. As the summer tourism season nears in this historic community along the Spring River, Rice hopes to help fill the void with occasional dinners, brunches and even afternoon high tea in a house built during the 1920s at a time when visitors were flocking to the area.

"By 1920, two blocks of Main Street were filled with businesses, including a bank, two cafes, two drugstores, a Ford automobile dealership and a grocery," Wayne Dowdy writes in the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture. "Town leaders--perhaps most notably drugstore owner William Johnston--tirelessly promoted Hardy as a place where city dwellers could find relaxation. In an interview with a Memphis Press-Scimitar reporter, Johnston boasted that Hardy had the 'finest fishing in the world.' Although most residents welcomed tourists, some townspeople found it difficult to adjust as the average population increased by thousands during the summer months. In 1935, café owner Tennie Meeker exclaimed: 'You take a big trainload of people and dump them down suddenly in a small town like Hardy, and it nearly works everybody to death.' As the 20th century progressed, tourists increasingly relied on automobiles to travel to the Spring River area. ... When large-scale federal highway construction began in the 1950s, the tourism population shifted from long-term visitors to those looking for a weekend getaway."

Hardy, established in 1883, is a product of the Kansas City, Springfield & Memphis Railroad. The Arkansas Legislature's offer to pay companies $10,000 for every mile of track laid in the state led to a boom in railroad construction in the decades after the Civil War. The town was named for James Hardy, a railroad contractor from Batesville. Hardy is in northern Sharp County, and the county seat was in the southern part at Evening Shade. It was a long trip on poorly constructed mountain roads. In 1894, Hardy was named as a second county seat, serving the northern part of the county.

By the 1900 census, there were 347 people living in the town. A lucky break came in 1908 when a train's mechanical failure resulted in a Memphis physician named George Gillespie Buford being stranded. He walked around the area with his wife while waiting for the train to be repaired, and the couple decided it would be a nice place for a summer cottage. In 1909, Buford purchased 50 acres on Wahpeton Hill. He later purchased additional land and constructed 10 cottages in 1912 to house summer visitors. In 1932, L.L. Ward of Blytheville opened a nearby resort known as Rio Vista. The YWCA built Camp Miramichee in 1916, the Boy Scouts built Camp Kia Kima the same year, and the Girl Scouts built Camp Kiwani in 1920. Hardy was filled each summer with visitors from as far away as St. Louis, Memphis and Little Rock.

"The established tourism industry in Hardy was augmented in 1955 with the construction of retirement homes by West Memphis developer John Cooper," Dowdy writes. "The founding of Cherokee Village increased tourism to the Ozark foothills. Within a decade, the Hardy area was recognized as an important retirement center."

The biggest draw remains the Spring River, which in late spring and summer attracts hordes of weekenders in their 20s and 30s to float the river and party along its banks. Just to the north at Mammoth Spring on the Arkansas-Missouri border, a giant spring pumps out an average of 9.78 million gallons of water per hour at a temperature of 58 degrees. The water runs into a 10-acre pond known as Spring Lake and then flows south, ensuring a constant flow of water for canoeists, kayakers and tubers. The Spring River eventually empties into the Black River near Black Rock in Lawrence County.

Like Hardy, Mammoth Spring came about in 1883 due to the railroad. A Memphis native named Napoleon Hill opened the first school there in 1888 and promoted Mammoth Spring as a summer retreat for Memphians. In 1887, the Mammoth Spring Improvement Co. constructed a dam at the spring to power a gristmill, cotton mill and cotton gin. The Arkansas-Missouri Power Co. bought the rights to the dam in 1925 and built a hydroelectric plant to provide power. The Mammoth Spring Improvement Co. built additional dams on the Spring River, and Mammoth Spring became the first town in the region to have electricity.

Mammoth Spring drew tourists to stay in hotels with names such as the Nettleton, the Culp and the Charlton. Passenger rail service to Mammoth Spring ended in 1968, and the former Frisco depot, which was built in 1886, was converted to a visitors' center in 1971. Like Hardy, Mammoth Spring has a downtown district filled with old buildings. On the Friday night I visited, Wood's Riverbend Restaurant and Fred's Fish House were crowded with diners. I had been advised by a friend to try out the German food at a tiny place called La Pastorella. It was good advice.

German food in Mammoth Spring--who knew? Rural Arkansas serves up surprises around every turn.

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Freelance columnist Rex Nelson is the director of corporate community relations for Simmons First National Corp. He's also the author of the Southern Fried blog at rexnelsonsouthernfried.com.

Editorial on 05/24/2017

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