1905 Basin Park Hotel

OVERVIEW

A tall, narrow hotel of local limestone at 12 Spring Street, built against the hillside so that every floor has a ground-level exit — a Ripley's 'Believe It or Not' oddity. It opened on 1 July 1905, 'a fire-proof structure built at a cost of $150,000', with a ball for a thousand guests, on the site of Captain Joe Perry's Perry House of 1881, the town's first hotel, which the town's histories say burned in 1890. Marty and Elise Roenigk bought it in February 1997 and the Crescent Hotel that May; the same company keeps both and sells the town as 'America's most haunted'.

HISTORY

In 1944 the Tulsa oilman Roy Parkhill bought the hotel for his nephew Joe, who set out to make Eureka Springs a resort for money from Chicago, with the gambling and drinking that implied; the Barefoot Ball began on 26 June 1948 when a Truth or Consequences couple won a stay on condition they stayed barefoot from California and back, and is still held each year.

REPORTED ACTIVITY

The hotel tells its own stories — footsteps and voices on the upper floors, a figure on the stairs, activity in the old ballroom and the rooms above the spring — attributing them to the Perry House fire beneath it and to the Parkhill years; it runs regular ghost tours and 'Parting the Veil' investigation weekends with equipment provided. The venue has an interest in the tradition and the entry says so. Beside the Crescent (already on the map) it is the second pillar of Eureka Springs' reputation.

VISITING

Open as a hotel, bar and restaurant; ghost tours and paranormal investigation weekends by ticket through basinpark.com. Downtown Eureka Springs is a National Register historic district.