Postcard From Eureka Springs

Downtown Eureka Springs

Eureka Springs is a pretty and fun little town in the beautiful hills of northwest Arkansas. Last fall, my family and I took a 3-day weekend to see what we could see there. We had heard of it for years, but this was our first visit.

From Conway, it's about 170 miles on mostly well-maintained 4-lane roads with very nice scenery and some interesting little towns to go through. Of course your route of travel may be different, but we came north on Hwy 65 from I-40 just like you are headed to Branson. A little south of the town of Bellafonte, Hwy 412/Hwy 62 join up with Hwy 65 and without changing the road you are driving on, all of a sudden you will be on Hwy 65/Hwy 62/Hwy 412 and probably some other name the locals know it by. At this point choose to watch the signs for Hwy 62/Hwy 412 as a few miles further north, Hwy 65 will break off to go straight north to Branson and you don't want to go there this trip. Hwy 62/Hwy 412 goes west for a few miles and then heads mostly northwest until just a few miles outside Eureka Springs. At this point you basically are there and you will see plenty of direction signs.

Downtown is an interesting collection of antique shops, art galleries, tourists shops,  little parks for taking a break from walking, and plenty of restaurants along with the normal small town collection of businesses. The whole downtown is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Eureka Springs is a favorite of motorcycle enthusiasts due to the hills, scenery, and gentle curves of the surrounding area roads and we had a good time walking and looking at the some of the really cool tricked-out bikes.

Something you should be aware of if you are not on a motorcycle - there is a distinct lack of parking spots in downtown. However, they have a great trolley car service that has frequent front-door service from most of the hotels and other designated stops. Tickets are $5 for an all-day pass ($1 for ages 7 - 11 and free for ages 6 and under) and are a great deal for that price. We stayed in a nice Best Western a little outside of town and used the trolley to get everywhere we wanted to go and I don't remember ever waiting more than about 15 minutes for one to come along.

Many interesting shops to
browse and shop, shop, shop!

One thing we did I would suggest you do too is take one of the guided tram tours of the town. For only $7.50, you'll find out some interesting things about the historic places and buildings in town. We enjoyed it.

The Rowdy Beaver - good burgers!

Just a little ways outside of town, sitting in a woodland setting, is the famous, 48-foot tall Thorncrown Chapel. This magnificent wooden structure has 425 windows and over 6,000 square feet of glass. It sits atop over 100 tons of native stone and colored flagstone. The chapel's design and awesome beauty combine to make it what critics have called "one of the finest religious spaces of modern times."

 

Thorncrown was the dream of retired school teacher, Jim Reed. In 1978 Jim enlisted the help of renowned architect E. Fay Jones to design a place of worship for the visitors to Eureka Springs. The result has now drawn over five million visitors since this woodland sanctuary opened in 1980. It has won numerous architectural awards such as the American Institute of Architecture's Design of the Year Award for 1981 and the American Institute of Architecture's Design of the Decade Award for the 1980's.

Thorncrrown Chapel

One last thing - If you love chocolate, you’ll be in heaven at the Chocolate Lovers’ Festival 2011, held on February 12. The festival celebrates all things chocolate with flowing chocolate fountains and plenty of chocolate samples to savor. The festival also features a variety of food contests with chocolate as the key ingredient; after judging, the winning entries are put up for bid in a silent auction. Try pairing chocolate with the wines that will be available. Pretty perfect way to celebrate Valentines!

Interior of Thorncrown Chapel

 

The Greatest Generation

Richard "Dick" Winters, the commander of Easy Company whose World War II exploits were portrayed in the "Band of Brothers" book and HBO series, died last month at the age of 92. Ed Mauser, until he also died last month at the age of 94, was the oldest surviving member of the group. Now, very few are still alive.
 

In Paris

When I heard about these two gentlemen passing, I started thinking again about my wife's father, also a WWII veteran. Unfortunately, he passed away before I even starting dating his daughter so I never met him. Some years later when my wife's mom passed away, while going through the household possessions, my wife and her sister showed me some of their father's Army keepsakes and things he brought back from the war against Germany. I don't think they had any idea what it really was or what their father had been a part of - uniform patches, medals, pictures, war trophy's, a pistol - all in several little boxes. The first patch I pulled from the first box was a shoulder patch, a cloth red numeral 1 - "The Big Red One"  was the First Infantry Division, also known as "The Fighting First" and was one of the most famous and decorated divisions of WWII. They fought across Africa, from Algiers into Tunisia, moved on to take Sicily and then stormed Omaha Beach on D-Day, fought in the Battle of the Bulge, and eventually attacked and penetrated the Siegfried line and were in Germany when the war ended.

The recent dead.

When I looked at the pictures, I was shocked to find concentration camp pictures he had taken. Unfortunately, the pictures were damaged, probably from just laying in cardboard boxes in the attic or in the back of a closet for years and years, but you could still make them out. And on the back, written in pencil in my deceased father-in-law Raymond's handwritting, were stories. In just a few words, written in a matter-of-fact, almost dispassionite manner, he told of survival and death, atrocities committed and the ability of people to turn a blind eye, to deny the horror happening right under their noses. From the writing on the back of those pictures and additional research I've done, I've managed to piece together a bit of the history.

200 bodies were laid out for the 
townspeople to see.

The Wobbelin camp, near the city of Ludwigslust, was a subcamp of the Neuengamme concentration camp. The SS had established Wobbelin in early February 1945, to house concentration camp prisoners whom the SS had evacuated from other camps to prevent their liberation by the Allies. At its height, Wobbelin held some 5,000 inmates, many of whom were suffering from starvation and disease.

Bodies to be buried on the palace grounds.

There was little food or water, and some prisoners had resorted to cannibalism. When the Army units arrived there, they found about 1,000 inmates dead in the camp. Just a short distance from the camp, downwind from the stench of the dead and within hearing distance of the screams of the tortured, the inhabitants of the town of Ludwigslust claimed they did not know what was happening in the camp. Upon hearing this, the U.S. Army ordered the townspeople to visit the camp and bury the dead on the palace grounds of the Archduke of Mecklenburg.

The townspeople forced to see the bodies.

On May 7, 1945, the 82nd Airborne Division conducted funeral services for 200 inmates in the town of Ludwigslust. Attending the ceremony were citizens of Ludwigslust, captured German officers, and several hundred members of the airborne division. The U.S. Army chaplain at the service delivered a eulogy stating that:

The crimes here committed in the name of the German people and by their acquiescence were minor compared to those to be found in concentration camps elsewhere in Germany. Here, there were no gas chambers, no crematoria; these men of Holland, Russia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and France were simply allowed to starve to death. Within four miles of your comfortable homes, 4,000 men were forced to live like animals, deprived even of the food you would give to your dogs. In three weeks, 1,000 of these men were starved to death; 800 of them were buried in pits in the nearby woods. These 200 who lie before us in these graves were found piled four and five high in one building and lying with the sick and dying in other buildings.

May 7, 1945

On May 8, 1945, Germany surrendered. The war in Europe was over. Shortly afterwards, Raymond Hiser found himself in Berlin. And then he came home, got a job, married a woman he met in England, brought her to America and together they raised a family and led a good, but mostly anonamous middle-class life in a suburb. Like a lot of soldiers who saw things people shouldn't see and did things good people shouldn't have to do, he didn't talk about it; he never told his children about that part of his life, never "bragged" about taking part in liberating one of those German hell-holes. He was one of thousands upon thousands of "The Greatest Generation" who simply did what they had to do to defend our country and never asked for anything in return.

Wife's father 3rd from right.