The Pinnacle Springs
 
Editor's Note: Among the most fascinating events in the history of Faulkner County is the rapid rise, development, and abandonment in the 1880s of the town of Pinnacle Springs on the North Cadron two miles west of Guy. The following description of the springs and "natural wonders" is taken from Handbook of the Arkansas River Valley (Chicago: C. S. Burch, 1887). This account is supplementary to other material published by our Society .1  The reader should recognize the hyperbole contained in this description of Pinnacle Springs.
 
These noted springs, of which mention has been made elsewhere, are located in Faulkner County, twenty miles north of Conway, the nearest point on the Little Rock and Fort Smith railway. They are easily accessible from this point by a most excellent road, the drive being a most beautiful one. An analysis of the waters of these springs shows a rare combination of minerals and gases, carbonate of iron and magnesia being found in good proportions, with an abundance of Glairine,2 an element very rare in springs of this class and giving the waters unusual curative and invigorating properties.
 
The scenery at and near these springs must be seen to be properly appreciated. Nature has gathered together here all that the heart could wish for health and pleasure resort. Thirteen springs of different waters are within one mile of each other, and on every hand stand monuments of Nature' s handiwork which beggars description. The Cadron, a gushing mountain stream, spreads its clear crystal waters into three lakes, known as the "Professor's Pool," "Spring Lake," and "Grotto Bathing Pool."
 
The Professor' s Pool is the largest, where six pleasure boats are moored, save when occupied by pleasure-seekers. The Grotto is a roofless cave dug into the mountain side by the rushing waters of the rain of ages, 150 feet deep and 300 feet long. The pinnacles from which these springs took their name are situated one-half mile below the Pinnacle spring, on each side of the creek. They are two tall, abrupt projections, 160 feet high, and appear to be links of a mountain that the rushing Cadron had worked its path between. The West Pinnacle is the most sublime of the two; secreted back of the East Pinnacle is the "Hidden Beauty," which makes the East and West side equally attractive.
 
Further down the creek is the "Owl's Horne," then the "Bear's Cave;" in fact, the creek winds it way through the mountain steeps and crags for seven miles and comes back within one and one-half miles of the springs, to the Alumn Bluffs, where the freaks of nature are so varied, so grand, so peculiar, so picturesque that a volume could be written and the truth not half told. These rugged steeps are more than a mile long. Here is found the Alumn Bluff, the Magnesia Bluff, the Narrow Gate, Nature's Park, the Giant's Table, the Bluff Pass, the Damsel's Parlor, etc., etc. The drive to the Bluff is delightful, the road being level and commanding a fine view frorn each side.
 
By actual experience these springs have demonstrated the great and important truth that the waters are an unfailing specific in the following diseases, viz: Bronchitis, hemorrhage of the lungs, dropsy, dyspepsia, chronic sore eyes, diabetes, and all diseases of the kidneys. Any inflammation of the stomach or inactivity of the liver is speedily relieved.
 
Footnotes:
 
1Jimmy G1over, "Pinnacle Springs," Faulkner Facts and Fiddlings (Spring 1965), pp. 21-27;
and Richard Willbanks, "Pinnacle Springs," Faulkner County: Its Land and People (Conway:
Faulkner County Historical Society, 1986), pp. 316-318.
 
2The dictionary defines "glair" as a white viscous, sticky substance.
 
 
News from Bygone Days: In 1796, Charles Melchior de Vilemont, the French commandant at Arkansas Post, agreed to send traders to rendezvous with the Osage Indians at Cadron. Unfortunately, the next year the trade event turned into a melee in which one hunter was killed. De Vilemont explained to the irate governor of Louisiana that a huge party of 500 to 600 Osages had come to the Post to inquire whether they could exchange the product of their hunt for goods, and he had felt unable to refuse them. Besides, de Vilemont wanted the Osage to help drive off the Chickasaws and Choctaws who often crossed the Mississippi to hunt in Quapaw lands. Morris S. Arnold, Colonial Arkansas, 1686-1804 (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1991), p. 122.