In pursing Yell County’s past, names of long-forgotten communities come to mine – Ally, Brita, Bethel, Alpha, Monrovia, Chula, Michel’s and Sulphur Springs, to name but a few. Each in its own way, contributed to making our county what is today.

The long-since vanished town of Sulphur Springs has a past worthy of note. Today only a church and a neglected cemetery bear evidence of its once illustrious past.

Health spas have captured the interest and allure of folks for generations. Scores have sought their healing waters for drinking and or bathing.

Yell County was not without a spa – Sulphur Springs. In its heyday its, “healing waters” were known from coast to coast.

Seven sulphur springs made up the spa complex that became a town in the early 1800s. The exact date of its birth and founder are lost to history. The original hotel and spa consisted of a log structure “sturdy enough to ward off attacks of marauding Indians and wild beasts.”

The sulphur waters were advertised to aid kidney and stomach troubles. Many remarkable “cures” were allegedly attributed to those native waters. Early success prompted visions of a great health resort. The owner resorted to extensive advertising.

The first known advertisement appeared in the Arkansas Gazette on May 1, 1841. In that edition proprietor V.T. Rogers stated, “The resort has opened for the season for entertainment for those in search of health and pleasure.” Mr. Rogers further stated the flowing waters were of superior medicinal quality – as effective as any waters in use.

A subsequent advertisement by then-Manager John R. Harris appeared in the Gazette on Aug. 11, 1851 “…there are three springs enclosed under on roof. Here will be found both black and white sulphur water, cool and pleasant to the taste. Its medicinal qualities are too well-known for me to describe. We advise all to come who enjoy life [that] a life should be spent in the summer season, for this is one of the best, cheapest and most picturesque watering places in the known world. Ample accommodations will be found for I have made arrangements for all. My table will be supplied with the dishes the county will afford so, gentlemen and ladies, come one and all.”

Through such advertising the hotel and spa became well known throughout the county, growing in popularities by leaps and bounds.

Bushwhackers, led by Col. Claud’s Union Calvary, completely destroyed the town and its building (except for a stone stable and a row of catalpa trees) during the Civil War. A new building was started in 1867 by James M. Adney and completed in 1872.

The new hostelry consisted of 20 rooms downstairs and 17 upstairs. The spacious surrounding veranda offered sleeping spaces for many guest during the warm weather. A huge dining room was used as a ballroom where people of society came from miles around for lavish dances and parties.

The hotel was known form New Orleans to Boston as the center for fashion and “night life gaiety.”

A city block of landscaped gardens and manicured lawns surrounded the edifice.

By 1878 Sulphur Springs was crowded to capacity, guest even spilling into tents on the grounds surround the hotel. Much of this overflow was attributed to the yellow-fever epidemic in Memphis, allegedly caused by the replacement of the city’s wooden block streets with stones – the thinking being that “germs” were released when the wooden block were distributed.

Hundreds of panic-stricken Memphis residents migrated to places like Sulphur Springs during the epidemic. Judge Choate, the owner at the time, deeded the health-giving springs to the public. This mistake resulted in vandalism and general neglect.

Establishment of a Presbyterian church and laying out 40 acres for home sites were also attributed to the judge. He traded the hotel for two of the cottages in 1904.

James M Adney, the new owner, lived but five years after the transaction. His daughter, Mrs. W.R. Hayden (Miss Pearl), ran the place until 1925, then sold it to a Mr. J.J. Tucker. Many stories abound on the loving care “Miss Pearl” lavished on his sick guests.

Mr. Tucker Lived in the hotel and rented out rooms and apartments; however, that arrangement ended the once-lavish function of the hotel, it being known only as a boarding house to invalids coming for benefit of its healing waters during that time.

In 1926 fire destroyed the hotel, never again to be rebuilt.

Scattered over two acres, in the middle of a cow pasture, is the long neglected, weed-overgrown cemetery – the final resting place for more than 30 people who sought cures from the healing waters of the spa. The cemetery had is beginning when Joseph H. Waite, a guest of the hotel, died in 1844.

Mr. Waite emaciated and in the terminal stages of tuberculosis came from “up North” and died shortly after arrival. When his family was notified of his death, they sent money for burial and tombstone with instructions for the epitaph to read, “Young, alone and far from home.”

The headstones on the 30 plus graves lay scattered over two acres, their headstones partially topped over, many crumbling with epitaphs barely discernible. Despite the deplorable state of the cemetery, one is left with a feeling of peace of serenity. Here are the remnants of a once well-groomed cemetery, isolated and nestled under the protective branches of massive oak trees amid the backdrop of Spring Mountain, safe from the ravages of modern civilization.

Perhaps those souls, so ravished by disease are not helped by the healing waters, did find the peace and contentment they so desperately sought by traveling and dying at a hotel and spa 12 miles from Dardanelle, Ark.