Squire Beaver and the Golden Gate Bridge

When you cross the Little Golden Gate bridge into Beaver, Arkansas, you pass into nostalgia that starts with Wilson Beaver, who arrived from Tennessee in the late 1870s. He promptly built a log cabin for his family, a grist mill, a Stagecoach Inn, and a ferry to cross the White River.

For years the town was called Beaver Ferry, and the ferry was the only way to get from one side of the White River to the other if you weren’t swimming. That included stagecoaches, horses, and humans. The local quarry supplied stone for all the major buildings in Eureka Springs, and if you’ve been to the Crescent Hotel or Basin Park Hotel, you’ve beheld and perhaps touched stone quarried and ferried across the river at just this point.

There were some 400 employees who worked at the quarry during this time, so it may be no surprise that no less than 30 saloons sprang up across the river in the long-lost town of Brooklyn. The saloons may have been what caught the eye of radical temperance activist Carrie A. Nation, who came to live in Eureka Springs after a lifetime of temperance work. Her home, Hatchett Hall, still stands on East Mountain, which you can discover on your self-guided East Mountain Climb with Eureka Concierge.

With a name like Carrie A Nation (really, we checked our facts), how could you not be a force to be reckoned with? With a nickname like Hatchet Granny, how could not become famous? Lore and rumor claim that one night she brought her hatchet to those saloons in Brooklyn.

But we digress.

It wasn’t until 1882 that the first train arrived to cross the “Narrows” at Beaver. Part of that track is still standing. The railroad ran from Eureka Springs to Seligman, MO, and Beaver was the best stop on the route for a picnic.

The ferry service continued until 1926, when the first bridge over the White River was constructed, although it was later destroyed by a flood. The present Little Golden Gate suspension bridge has been standing (with many repairs) since 1949. Named because of the resemblance to its San Francisco cousin, the bridge was the backdrop used in the movie Elizabethtown. The 2005 film starred Orlando Bloom, Kirsten Dunst, Alec Baldwin, and Susan Sarandon.

Cross the river with care and into nostalgia.