Chapter IV: The Discovery of the Indian Healing Spring

The man largely responsible for the starting of a town at "the springs" in Carroll County, Arkansas was a pioneer doctor named Alvah Jackson. He was a man of many talents. He not only practiced medicine but was also a great hunter and trader. In 1834 he was shipping bear oil down the White River from Oil Trough in Independence County, Arkansas. The town of Jacksonville was named in his honor.

During his hunting trips and trading expeditions into the hills, the doctor contacted many Indians. They told him of a healing spring hidden deep in the mountains that was a sacred spot to the redmen. Jackson began searching for that spring. From the information secured the spring flowed through a basin carved in a table of rock and was located near the head of a small creek with two prongs which flowed into White River eight miles away.

Dr. Jackson spent twenty years looking for this spring. In 1854 he decided that he had found it in what is now known as Rock Spring in north central Carroll County near Kings River. He immediately moved his family there. But he was not satisfied that he had found the coveted spot.

One day in 1854 while hunting in the mountains with his twelve-year-old son, his dogs "treed" a panther in a rock cliff near the head of Little Leatherwood Creek. The boy was afflicted with sore eyelids and while helping dig for the panther, got dirt in his eyes. The doctor told him to go down the hillside to a spring, to rake the leaves away, and wash his eyes. The boy did as he was told and returned to tell his father that the spring flowed through a basin apparently carved by hand. The doctor hurried down to take a look. He recognized it as the Indian Healing Spring he had been searching for these twenty years. (This is the Basin Spring with its carved basin in the Basin Circle at Eureka Springs.)

Each day following the discovery Dr. Jackson rode horseback from his home at Rock Spring and filled his saddlebags with bottles of water from the healing spring. His son bathed his eyes in this water and they healed rapidly. Then the doctor began peddling the water to neighboring towns in Arkansas and Missouri, selling it under the label, "Dr. Jackson's Eye Water."

When the Civil War broke out Dr. Jackson refused to take sides. He established a hospital in the Old Rock House that had been a hunter's rendezvous for many years, and built a crude cabin on the bluff above it. It was open to all who needed treatment, but patronized largely by disabled Confederate soldiers. When the battle of Pea Ridge was fought twenty miles away in March 1862, this rustic hospital was overcrowded. (The Old Rock House may be seen today at the rear of Ray Harris' Feed Store at the junction of Spring and Main Streets, Eureka Springs. The Everett Wheeler home is at the site of Jackson's cabin.)

The old Rock House was both hospital and bath house. The doctor took hogsheads and split them into halves for bath tubs. He ordered his patients to drink the spring water until it ran out of their mouths.

Cora Pinkley Call, in her book "Stair-Step Town,"[7] tells how the curative waters of the old Indian Healing Spring were heralded to the world and how it brought thousands of people from all parts of the United States to use the water for drinking and bathing. Judge L. B. Saunders, of the Indian Territory, had moved his family to Berryville in the seventies in order that his son, Burton, might attend Clark Academy. The judge had a leg sore that doctors had pronounced incurable. He was a friend of Dr. Alvah Jackson and frequently hunted with him. The doctor invited the judge to try the water at the Indian Spring for his leg. A cabin was erected at the site and the Saunders family spent several weeks there. The judge's leg was healed and he was so enthusiastic about it that he spread the news to other parts of the country. Health seekers began to arrive at the wilderness mecca, living in their covered wagons or putting up tents. By July 1, 1879 there were about twenty families camping near the healing spring.