Has It Disappeared?

Have you ever asked yourself, "where did that go?" or "what happened to that store?" or "when did that historic building get torn down?"

Not long ago, I found myself trying to remember something that used to be in Eureka Springs. I knew exactly where it had been. I could see the location in my mind. I knew I had driven past it hundreds of times, probably walked past it nearly as many, and yet when I tried to reconstruct the details, they simply weren’t there. What color was the building? What did the sign look like? When did it close? Was there something else there before it? Most embarrassingly, when exactly had it disappeared?

I couldn’t remember.

That bothered me more than I expected because I love this town. I write about this town. I photograph this town. I have spent years exploring its history, its architecture, its people and its peculiarities, and yet here was something that had occupied a little piece of Eureka Springs right in front of me and somehow I had allowed it to become invisible long before it was actually gone.

Maybe you have done it, too.

There is a peculiar thing that happens to us when we live somewhere long enough. The extraordinary becomes ordinary. The building that stopped us in our tracks the first time we saw it eventually becomes the building we drive past while thinking about what we need from Hart’s. The winding street that once seemed impossibly charming becomes the street where somebody in front of us is driving twelve miles an hour. The limestone wall that fascinated us becomes simply the wall beside which we park. Even those magnificent old Eureka houses perched in locations where no rational builder should ever have attempted to construct a house eventually become scenery.

We stop looking because we assume it will all be there tomorrow.

And Eureka Springs, perhaps more than most places, deserves better than that.

The Town We Think We Know

Eureka is an interesting place to consider the idea of disappearance because so much of our identity is based upon the fact that somehow, against rather remarkable odds, so much didn't disappear.

Our little city was founded in 1879, grew at a breathtaking pace and produced much of the architectural landscape we recognize today during a relatively short period of explosive development. By the time Eureka Springs was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1970, the district contained hundreds of buildings dating to the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Even today, the overwhelming character of the historic district comes from structures built during Eureka's great Victorian building period.

Think about that for a moment.

We are walking around inside the surviving pieces of another century.

Those thousands upon thousands of pieces of native limestone stacked into retaining walls weren't placed there for our Instagram pictures. Those staircases climbing from one street to another weren't built because somebody thought tourists might find them charming. Those buildings hanging over ravines and tucked into impossible hillsides weren't designed as historical exhibits. They were simply Eureka Springs.

People lived there. Somebody carried groceries up those steps. Somebody complained about repairing those walls. Somebody opened the door to one of those shops on an ordinary Tuesday morning in 1897 without the slightest thought that more than a century later people would stand outside admiring the building.

History almost never knows when it is becoming history. That's the part I find fascinating.

We tend to imagine history as something that happened before us. History is sepia colored. History has plaques attached to it. History is something you read about at the Eureka Springs Historical Museum.

But history is happening this afternoon.

We just don't know which parts of this afternoon somebody will wish we had preserved.

When Familiar Becomes Invisible

Walk down Spring Street sometime and try something different. Pretend you've never been here before. It is harder than you might think.

Look up.

Not straight ahead. Up.

Suddenly you begin seeing Eureka Springs again.

There are architectural details above storefronts you may have walked beneath for twenty years without noticing. There are windows and cornices and bits of stonework that disappear from our awareness because our normal field of vision exists somewhere between the sidewalk and the shop window. There are stairways tucked between buildings, retaining walls disappearing around corners, tiny gardens squeezed into improbable spaces and doors that make you wonder where on earth they lead.

Then walk Main Street.

Look behind the buildings. Look above them. Look at how this town actually sits upon the land. Eureka Springs does not politely rest on top of the Ozarks. It clings to them. Houses are scattered across mountaintops, attached to hillsides and tucked into ravines. Historic surveys describe limestone walls, public stairs and walking paths as important pieces of the character of the historic district, but anyone who lives here understands that those features are more than architectural inventory. They are the bones of Eureka Springs. And yet we drive past them every day.

That's what familiarity does. It takes something extraordinary and whispers, You've already seen this. So, we stop seeing it. Until something changes. Then everybody notices.

"What Used to Be There?"

Few questions can launch a conversation among longtime Eurekans faster than, “What used to be there?”

Go ahead. Ask it and stand back.

Someone remembers a restaurant. Someone else insists it was a shop before that. Another person remembers the owner. Somebody remembers what the owner drove. Another remembers what was there in 1987 and somebody else will inevitably tell you that you're all wrong because their aunt worked there in 1974.

This is one of my favorite things about small towns. Our history isn't stored entirely in archives. Some of it is walking around town buying groceries.

And that history is wonderfully imperfect.

Someone remembers the food. Someone remembers the sign. Someone remembers the night they met the person they eventually married. Someone remembers dancing there. Someone remembers getting fired there. Someone remembers sitting outside with a friend who has since died.

Suddenly we aren't talking about a building or a business anymore. We're talking about ourselves. That time I met Harmonica Jeff at Cafe Oasis. That time I met two rough bikers at The Cat House and learned just how homophobia can be unlearned if you put your mind to it. That time we walked into Henry's Just One More and we were stunned with how cool the place was inside.

Places become containers for our lives, and perhaps that is why their disappearance can affect us so deeply. We think we miss the restaurant, the bar, the gallery or the shop, but sometimes what we actually miss is the version of ourselves who existed when that place was part of our lives.

We were younger then. Our friends lived closer. Our parents were still alive. We had just moved here. We hadn't moved away yet. We were falling in love. We were starting over. We were certain we would never leave Eureka Springs. Or perhaps we were absolutely certain we would.

Then twenty years pass. The storefront changes. The sign comes down.

And we say, “I loved that place.”

I just wonder whether we knew how much we loved it while it was still there.

The Eureka That Has Already Disappeared

Of course, Eureka Springs has always changed. Anyone who believes there was one pristine moment when Eureka was finally “finished” hasn't been paying attention to our history.

This town has reinvented itself repeatedly.

We were a healing-water boomtown, drawing people into these Ozark hills with promises attached to our springs. We became one of the great Victorian resort communities of the region. Then medical science changed, the fascination with healing waters diminished and Eureka entered harder times. Artists and writers later discovered this peculiar little mountain town, and tourism changed it again. Each generation inherited a Eureka Springs altered by the generation before it. Eureka Springs feels timeless.

Even preservation itself became part of our reinvention. Eureka Springs became Arkansas's first historic district listed on the National Register in 1970, and the community has spent decades wrestling with that complicated relationship between preservation and progress.

And thank goodness we did.

Because once something is gone, preservation becomes memory. Still, preservation isn't simply about keeping an old building standing. I think sometimes we misunderstand that.

You can save the buildings and still lose the town. You can restore every cornice, repaint every porch, repair every limestone wall and still allow the personality of a place to slowly disappear.

Because Eureka Springs isn't just architecture.

It is people, characters, stories.

It is businesses, artists, and musicians.

It is the person who has occupied the same barstool every Thursday afternoon for fifteen years at The Stonehouse. It is the woman behind the counter who knows your name at Eureka Market. It is the neighbor who always waves. It is Jim Duke passing out his town crier cards and the guy walking the dog you've seen approximately four thousand times but whose name you still don't know. It is somebody planting flowers outside a shop. It is somebody playing music on the street. It is your neighbor Linda sitting on the porch. It's Zeke Taylor, opening up his home for the Annual White Street Art Studio Walk.

They become part of our landscape, too. And we make exactly the same mistake with them.

We assume they'll be there tomorrow.

The People We Think Will Always Be Here

Every town has people who become landmarks and Eureka Springs may have more of them per capita than anywhere else in America.

You know these people even if you don't actually know them. You've seen them for years. You recognize their dog. You know where they sit. You know which shop is theirs. You know their car. You know their hat. You have exchanged that little Eureka nod a hundred times. Somehow, they become permanent fixtures in our minds.

Then one day you realize you haven't seen somebody lately. “Whatever happened to…?”

And there it is again. That question. Where did they go?

Sometimes they moved. Sometimes they retired. Sometimes life simply took them somewhere else. And sometimes we learn the news we didn't want to hear.

Suddenly the chair is empty. The porch looks different. Somebody else is behind the counter. And you realize that a tiny piece of your Eureka Springs disappeared without asking permission.

Those moments remind me that preservation shouldn't only apply to buildings. Maybe we should preserve people while they're here. Ask the question. Hear the story. Learn the name.

Tell somebody you appreciate what they contribute to this town.

If there is an artist whose work makes Eureka more interesting, tell them. If there is a musician you stop to listen to, say thank you. If there is a shopkeeper whose window you enjoy every time you pass it, walk inside and tell them how beautiful that window display is.

Because someday somebody will say, “Remember when…?”

And you'll wish you had.❤️