2025 | Where There's a Wall, There's a Way!

On May 3, 2025, during the ArtRageous Parade, which happens every year to kick off the month of May in downtown, Eureka Springs, Arkansas, Humpy Dumpty returned and he's looking and feeling better than ever. (Note: May is the Festival of the Arts month in ES.)

Paradegoers, the usual mix of locals and visitors, all abuzz about his arrival. You see, Humpty Dumpty had a fall. A big fall. It was back when the pandemic happened and he, too, took ill. Except, for our beloved mascot, he had a bad, bad case of termites. Check out this blog post to learn more about what happened that fateful year.

"Covid-19 killed Humpty Dumpty!"

The Eureka Springs ArtRageous parade is so joyful. I was jumping around like I was 12 again, taking pics, blowing bubbles, catching candy and having an overall blast of a time but it was when the Humpty Dumpty float passed me when my smile went from ear to ear.

"He's back!" I screamed to Jeff, who smiled back at me from ear to ear.

As Humpty's float passed all of us, I heard the lady next to me as she was talking into her phone narrating the parade for her online following on Facebook Live, she said, "h'eeeee'res Humpty (in that, signature Johnny Carson intro drawl.) Then she said, "I can't wait to see where he gets perched this time around. I'm sooo so glad he's back on a wall in joyful Eureka Springs where he belongs. He's the perfect mascot for this place."

How right she is.

Flash forward to just days later ...

It's May 6, 2025, and just in time for the official unveiling of the newly refurbished Basin Spring Park, Eureka Springs Parks and Recreation dismounted Humpty from his parade float and erected him downtown in Basin Spring Park appropriately on the wall to the right of the performance stage. Parks and Recreation marketed the event on social media with a shoutout to The Banks Family Foundation and Stephen R Feilbach for creating this joyful fellow.

I wasn't around for his wall mounting event in Basin Spring Park, as I was in my office likely checking emails and putting out another work-related fire, but I met up with him sometime between brunch and a grocery run on Saturday, May 10, 2025.

That’s When I Saw Him

Perched like a gargoyle of joy on the ledge to the right of the stage wall, legs hanging over, wide-eyed, smiling big, and undeniably oval, Humpty’s been around a very long time. The original rhyme dates back to the late 18th century, but like all good folklore, the shell has many cracks.

Eggsistential Origins

Originally, Humpty wasn’t even an egg. Nope. Not even close. Although there are a few tales out there, the most popular is that he was most likely a cannon (yes, a cannon) used during the English Civil War in the Siege of Colchester (1648). The Royalists had a massive artillery piece they nicknamed Humpty Dumpty, which sat high upon a church wall and, after a direct hit, fell. Naturally, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men (a.k.a. military repair dudes) couldn’t hoist the thing back up. Thus, the rhyme was born.

Writer Lewis Carroll depicted Humpty Dumpty as an egg with a monocle and sass in Through the Looking-Glass in 1871. The image stuck. And now here we are -- a once-mighty cannon transformed into a sentient breakfast item in a yellow-bow tie and top hat on a wall.

Humpty Finds Home in the Ozarks

There’s something about this town that calls to misfits, artists, musicians and nursery rhyme characters. Maybe it’s the magnetism in the stones that hold us all up here in these hills or maybe it’s the ghost of Carrie Nation hurling temperance bottles at drinkin' locals. Or maybe it’s the very soul of Eureka itself ... quirky, creative, and ever so concerned with whether or not you’ve recently plummeted from a wall after a few too many...

...and isn’t quirky and creative at the very core of Eureka Springs?

Beautiful Cracks

Like our Humpty, our beloved Basin Spring Park was also adorned with beautiful cracks that resonated the history throughout these hills and hollers.

Humpty fell in 2021, but before the park could have a chance to fall, (she was a sinkin' and needed foundation restructuring) Parks and Recreation came to the rescue and revitalized both Basin Spring Park and Humpty Dumpty.

What I love most about our dear Egg-Man is that he’s never stopped showing up, even after his dreadful fall off the wall.

Local artist Robert R. Norman created beautiful pics and t-shirts in his memory and many people in town (and visitors, of course) acquired their own memorabilia to keep him alive and in our hearts. You could sense in the air that this wasn't his final bow. Eureakans had hope in their hearts that all the king's horses and all the king's men would ... well, you know.

Sure, the rhyme insists he couldn’t be put back together again. But isn’t that a bit of melodrama? I mean, I’ve met Eureka Springs residents who’ve survived five husbands, two floods, an overdose and a parking ticket from 1999 that they still contest because they swear, they fed the damn meter.

Here, we celebrate the beautifully broken. We throw parades for the quirky. We make art from the jagged bits, and we hot-glue-gun life back together with a smile and a glitter mustache. This is community. This is Eureka!

Humpty Dumpty is a big part of this community. He's the broken dude that welcomes everyone to town. There's no way Eureka would've moved forward without putting him back together again to spread his joy into the next person and the next . . .

So maybe Humpty Dumpty wasn’t a cautionary tale. Maybe he's the reminder we all need once in a while for what it means to shatter, stick around, and reinvent yourself on a city park wall next to a haunted hotel, down the street from a crystal shop and above Eureka's most famous spring that brought forth the healing waters that drew people here in the first place.

Better Than Ever

So, before I left him, solidly seated, gazing at the mountains, I wondered if perhaps this time, he could stay put.

Moral of the Story

If you’re going to fall apart, do it in Eureka Springs. We’ve got the super glue, the sass, and just enough quirky sparkle to make you feel whole again. Humpty Dumpty is solid proof.❤️