Powell Clayton, Arkansas’s Reconstruction-era governor, backed the hotel’s construction in 1884, hiring architect Isaac S. Taylor to build a limestone resort atop West Mountain overlooking Eureka Springs. Irish stonemasons cut the 18-inch blocks by hand from a quarry on the White River and fit them without mortar. When the Crescent opened on May 20, 1886, the local paper called it America’s most luxurious resort hotel, and 400 guests turned out for the opening gala.
The hotel’s fortunes rose and fell with the town’s mineral-spring tourism, and for a stretch in the 1930s it operated as a fraudulent cancer hospital under a self-proclaimed doctor, a chapter that still surfaces in local ghost tours. Marty and Elise Roenigk bought the building in 1997 and spent six years on a full restoration. Today it’s listed on the National Register of Historic Places and remains one of the most recognized hotels in the Ozarks.