“Collapsible tin cups were very popular in those days and the health seekers would go from spring to spring, rest awhile in the cool shade, sample the water and argue the respective merits of Basin and Magnetic or Sweet and Crescent. They would keep on going to Dairy Spring and Grotto and some walked as far as Oil Spring to bring back a jug of water. A program of strenuous exertion like that, plus the copious drinking of pure water, induced an active patronage of the rest rooms provided at strategic points along the way and it worked wonders. Try it and see.
“As I write these lines I hear a great choir singing on the radio:
‘I love Thy rocks and rills, Thy woods and templed hills, My heart with rapture thrills....’
“Gosh-all-hemlock, they’re singing about old Eureka Springs.”[17]
The “CASEY JONES” legend of railroad lore does not tie up with the turbulent history of the North Arkansas Line, but the two episodes do have a far-fetched parallel. If trouble is a weld of incident there is a connection between the two. The wreck of No. 382 of the Cannon Ball Express at Vaughn, Mississippi, on May 1, 1900 brought Casey into railroadana’s hall of fame, but the North Arkansas Railroad, now the Arkansas and Ozarks Line, experienced almost continued trouble during its first 60 years of history. The ballad makers have missed a good bet in ignoring the harrowed tale of this mechanical step-child of the central Ozarks. Time will probably weave the story into a legend, but that day has not yet arrived.
The Ozark region has had many ups and downs since the “Arkansaw Traveler” tuned his fiddle in the Pope county hills. Most of the frustrations, however, were of short duration. But the North Arkansas Railroad as a problem child of industry is written large in Ozark history. Two sections of the line have been reopened for service after a tense struggle for survival. The following historical outline will explain the difficulties the line has had:
1881. The Frisco Railroad, headed toward Oklahoma and Texas, reached Seligman, Missouri, this year. Eighteen miles to the southeast was the booming resort town of Eureka Springs, Arkansas, which had been settled and named two years before. The traveling public tired of the slow stage coach service, and the local business men wanted a branch line from the Frisco to the Spa. St. Louis capital got busy and a twelve-mile line from Seligman to Beaver, Arkansas, on White River was built. It was named the Missouri and Arkansas Railroad.