Arkansas has shed its undeserved Dogpatch reputation. Northwest Arkansas has become prosperous, with a wealth of places of interest for tourists, and offering some of America’s most beautiful nature, along with cultural events, and many craft and antique fairs. The new Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport serves as the gateway to Ozark towns and villages, such as Bentonville, home of Walmart, and Eureka Springs, as well as Fayetteville and the University of Arkansas.

Crystal Bridges

What has really put Northwest Arkansas on the American cultural map is the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, founded by Sam Walton’s daughter, Alice, in Bentonville, and opened on November 11, 2011.

Alice Walton hired internationally renowned architect Moshe Safdie, who envisioned a building that would complement the surrounding Ozark landscape. Nestled into a natural ravine, the Museum integrates the element of water through the creation of two spring-fed ponds that are spanned by two bridges and surrounded by a group of buildings housing museum galleries and studios. Mrs. Walton named her museum Crystal Bridges – “crystal” for the name of the natural spring on the site, and “bridges” for the bridges built over the meandering water running through the property. It’s a beautiful place, inside the buildings and in the rolling landscape outside.

Along with outstanding examples of nineteenth century American painting, the museum has a fine collection of paintings and sculptures representing various schools of twentieth century art. The collection continues to grow, and there is always a temporary exhibit on show. The current temporary exhibit is State of the Art: Discovering American Art Now. It consists of 227 works by 102 unappreciated artists from all over the United States. Objects in the exhibit range from 3 inches to room size.

The museum’s glassed-in Eleven Restaurant, with water on both sides, has a beautiful vaulted wooden roof in the middle of which hangs Jeff Koons’ huge, 3000 pound golden heart, ten feet wide and dangling nine feet above the heads of diners. In the restaurant, guests can choose from a variety of sandwiches, salads and a few hot dishes for lunch daily, except on Tuesdays when the museum is closed, and dinner on Wednesdays and Fridays.

The park surrounding the museum is filled with trees, flowering plants and sculptures complementing the landscape. More than three miles of trails, each offering different plant life and terrain, meander through the Ozark forest and are open year round.

Robert Indiana, “Love” (Cor-Ten steel)

Admission to the museum is free, and it has brought a sense of excitement to Bentonville and the surrounding communities. Programs and classes for adults and children are part of the lure, as are the temporary exhibits and concerts. Children, many of whom have never been to a museum, are bussed in from surrounding states.

Bentonville

Bentonville itself is a lively small town, with a pretty square with a statue of a Confederate soldier in its center. The brick buildings encircling the square house shops, galleries, restaurants and the Walmart Visitors Center, located in Sam Walton’s original Five and Dime store, established in 1950. The Visitors Center, which includes a gift shop, is a small museum of the Walmart history and Sam Walton’s rise to fame and fortune. It includes cabinets filled with artifacts based on Walton’s autobiography as well as interactive displays

Other sites of interest are The Peel Mansion and the Museum of Native Americans. The former is an 1875 Italianate villa built by Colonel Samuel Peel, the first native-born Arkansan to be elected to the United States Congress. On the site is a pre-Civil War log cabin, and an outdoor museum of heritage roses, perennials and native plants. The Museum of Native Americans begins its exhibition with Paleo objects through the Archaic, Woodland, Mississippian and Historic periods, including a large display of stone tools and arrowheads.

On the first Friday of every month, music, crafts and food take over the central square, which is home to an extensive farmers’ market every Saturday morning. The First Fridays also include outdoor movies and musical entertainment. The town has a lively art scene, and there are murals to enjoy in the downtown area, many painted by Bentonville’s children.

Bentonville’s renaissance has brought about a flourishing of dining options and an “art” hotel. The 21C Museum boutique hotel opened in 2013. The hotel’s special feature is contemporary art work throughout the public rooms, the outdoor spaces and the hallways. The art changes every six months. The rooms are very contemporary but with only a single reproduction on the walls. The real art is downstairs, as are the big green penguins that show up at odd times in odd places, including sometimes at your table in the dining room, the Hive, which offers diners a sophisticated meal of contemporary American dishes. A nature trail leads from the hotel through the Crystal Bridges Museum park to the entrance of the museum.

Armando Marino, “The Raft” (wheel-less body of 1950 Plymouth supported by
Cuban legs “on the march”)

Just down from the central square, the Tusk & Trotter is an informal restaurant, serving a variety of pork cuts, including fried pig ear chips, as well as traditional American dishes.

For breakfast, the Station Cafe, owned like much in town by the Walmart Company, is the place to go. It’s a folksy, colorful spot with early twentieth century decor, small booths with tables covered in checkered oilcloth, good coffee and fresh eggs.

There are half a dozen cafes on the square and on First Fridays, Bentonville celebrates with food trucks parked around the central square offering ethnic and American foods. At the end of the Walmart Center tour is an old fashioned soda fountain where a visitor can still get a heaping scoop of delicious ice cream for 99 cents.

A few miles east of Bentonville is Rogers, where the first Walmart store opened in 1962. Rogers is home of the Daisy Airgun Museum, which displays guns dating from 1888 to the present, including a World War II exhibit. Its gift shop sells limited edition guns. Rogers has a major indoor arts and crafts festival in the spring and in the fall in the Frisco Station Mall.

Between Rogers and Eureka Springs, just off Highway 12, is the War Eagle gristmill, built originally in 1832. Thrice destroyed, first by flood and then by fire, the mill was finally rebuilt in 1973 and is the only working mill in Arkansas. The mill is powered by an 18 foot cypress waterwheel.

The site is home to the War Eagle Craft and Culinary fair and the Sharp’s Shaw fair that take place at the same time in early May and mid-October. Both feature crafts of all kinds, food and music, as well as antiques.

A little music at the War Eagle Craft Fair

Eureka Springs

Eureka Springs is a mountain town of some 2,000 inhabitants, many of them artists. The town’s streets meander up and down the hills, never intersecting. They are lined with beautiful Victorian houses and cottages, many of which are bed and breakfast inns. Since its founding in 1879, the town has attracted tourists, initially for its healing spring water, and now for its shops and galleries offering the work of local artists and craftsmen and women. The healing spring waters were known to the American Indians long before the town’s official founding.

Since Eureka Springs became a major tourist attraction in the Ozarks, the dining scene has become upscale and sophisticated. Perhaps the best restaurant in town is the Grand Taverne, located in the Grand Central Hotel. The restaurant has the atmosphere of an old Victorian establishment, but the cooking is sophisticated, contemporary American cuisine. The restaurant serves dinner only, and on weekends, dinner is accompanied by a pianist playing show tunes and popular songs of decades past.

Another excellent restaurant serving contemporary American cuisine at slightly lower prices for lunch, dinner and Sunday brunch, is Local Flavor. While Local Flavor doesn’t have the charm of the Grand Taverne dining room, it serves food that’s first rate. The restaurant is popular with locals and visitors alike and tends to have long waiting lists on weekends and for Sunday brunch.

A delightful spot for breakfast, a ‘burger or an afternoon drink is the balcony on the second floor of the 1905 Basin Park Hotel. On Fridays, a fish fry is served all day long. On one side of the balcony, guests have a perfect view of the shops on Spring Street, and the comings and goings on the street. On the side of the hotel facing Basin Spring Park, guests have a clear view of the little park and the spring that gives the town its name. Many events take place in the park.

A highlight of events is the early May, Eureka Springs’ Artrageous parade when artists dance down Spring Street to everyone’s delight. Locals and tourists line the streets to watch the costumed members of the artists’ colony entertain the populace.

Another major attraction is the summer long Great Passion Play with its cast of 170 actors and dozens of live animals, but the town also offers music festivals, craft and antique fairs and even a summer Opera of the Ozarks, which produced Mozart, Puccini and Sondheim operas this past summer in the Fine Arts Center. Eureka Springs is also a good place to buy hand-made quilts; the Quilt Shop in the center of town has a large selection of beautiful (and expensive) hand sewn quilts.

The Crescent Hotel & Spa is Eureka Springs’ grand old hotel, built in 1886. The renovated hotel has retained its 19th century character, including the 14 foot ceilings in the Crystal Ballroom, the elegant lobby and the verandas on which guests can enjoy the fresh Ozark air. The hotel is known as America’s most haunted hotel and offers nightly ghost tours.

About three miles outside Eureka Springs en route back to the airport along Highway 62 is the Thorncrown Chapel, a magnificent wooden structure rising 48 feet up into the Ozark forest. The chapel contains 425 windows and over 6,000 feet of glass. It sits atop 100 tons of native stone and colored flagstone. The chapel, designed by Arkansas architect E. Fay Jones, a pupil of Frank Lloyd Wright, was the dream of Jim Reed, who purchased the site with the intention of building his retirement home. Instead, he decided to give wayfarers a place to relax and enjoy the beautiful Ozark scenery. Don’t miss it.

As for Dogpatch, it may still be on the map of Northwest Arkansas, but it never was a real place. Dogpatch was a themed amusement park, based on characters created by Al Capp in his “L’il Abner” comic strip. It opened in 1968, and closed in 1993. All that is left today are ruins with grasses growing and leaves blowing through the remnants. It never was the real Arkansas to begin with.

If You Go:

• Crystal Bridges Museum
• 21C Museum Hotel
• Bentonville
• Craft Fairs
• Eureka Springs
• Thorncrown Chapel
• Northwest Arkansas

This article was first published on 2017.

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They left in droves for the new worlds, some to North America, others to Australia and New Zealand. They were the Irish poor, fleeing from famine-ridden Ireland where only the English had enough to eat.

From 1848 to 1950, over 6 million adults and children emigrated from Ireland, more than a third departing from Cobh (pronounced “Cove”), Queenstown under British rule, in County Cork. The story of this exodus is detailed in “Cobh, The Queenstown Story,” a multi-media exhibit presented at the Cobh Heritage Center.

The Center is located in a beautifully restored Victorian railway station and offers visitors a fascinating introduction to the history of this charming small town and its harbor on the southern coast of Ireland’s County Cork.

The story is told with dramatic detail and panoramas – with sound – of life aboard the ships sailing to a better life. The ships were crowded, sometimes desperately so for the poorer passengers, who often spent the passage in squalor below decks.

Panorama of emigrants on shipboard, Cobh Heritage Center.

Not all emigrants left because of the failure of the potato crop, which resulted in one and a half million emigrants between 1845 and 1851. While the exodus was largely the result of poverty and crop failure, other causes were the land system and poverty of opportunity.

The exhibit further tells the story of the convicts deported from Ireland under horrendous conditions akin to those of the slave ships. The first convict ship to travel directly from Ireland to Australia sailed in 1791 and carried 159 prisoners. Between 1791 and 1853, 30,000 men and 9,000 women were deported from Ireland for crimes ranging from petty theft to murder.

The Center has additional exhibits devoted to the Titanic, which called at the port of Queenstown on its fatal 1912 voyage to America, and the Lusitania, whose survivors were ferried to Queenstown after the ship was torpedoed by a German submarine in 1915 about 10 miles off the port of Kinsale.

123 passengers embarked the Titanic at Queenstown, 113 in steerage. The 151 dead from the Lusitania were buried in mass graves in the Old Church cemetery, just north of Cobh.

The Center offers a genealogical search survey for visitors interested in tracing their Irish ancestry. There are a restaurant and several shops, including the ubiquitous place to buy gifts and souvenirs.

The Great Famine exhibit in the Skibbereen Heritage Center in West Cork – located in the Old Gasworks building – offers a fascinating glimpse into the effects of the failure of the potato crop. In 1841, the population of Ireland was 8.5 million people. Nine years later, more than 1 million had starved or otherwise died in terrible conditions. Another million had emigrated.

Part of Great Famine Exhibit, Skibbereen Heritage Center.

Skibbereen was one of the worst affected areas in all of Ireland. Newspaper accounts, shown in the exhibition, describe the dreadful conditions of the time. Between eight and ten thousand unidentified men, women and children are buried in the famine burial graves across the River Ilen from the Heritage Center. Throughout the exhibit, audio-visual accounts lend a graphic portrait of the times and the suffering of the Irish.

Today, Skibbereen is an attractive small town with a lively weekly market, some good restaurants and an array of shops on its “high,” or main street.

Residents of Kinsale could see the Lusitania as it sank. Kinsale, once a fishing village, has been transformed into a tourist destination, a “foodie hub” where each October a four-day gourmet festival takes place.

It remains a lovely small town with brightly painted houses, window boxes bursting with color on hundreds of windows, dozens of art galleries and craft shops, a regional museum housed in the old Market House (built in 1600), and a 17th century fort located at the head of the harbor. The town boasts one of the best restaurants in Ireland: if you can’t get a reservation at Fishy Fishy Café, try the Blue Haven Inn, which has a fine kitchen, old fashioned atmosphere, excellent seafood and a first class wine list.

Kinsale.

Kinsale has its castle too. Desmond Castle, built around the year 1500 by the Earl of Desmond, served originally as the Kinsale Customs House. It was used by the British during the American Revolution as a prison for captured American sailors, and during the mid-18th century, it housed French prisoners. During the years of the great famine, the castle became a workhouse for starving families. Today, it’s home to the International Museum of Wine. An exhibition in the museum traces the story of Ireland’s wine links to France and the rest of the wine producing world.

There are castles scattered throughout County Cork, as elsewhere in Ireland, from those like the restored Dun na Sead castle in Baltimore now occupied by a family, to the legendary Blarney Castle.

The heart of County Cork is Cork City, the Republic of Ireland’s second city and a smaller version of Dublin. Downtown Cork City offers locals and visitors alike versions of the department stores found in Dublin. In the center of town is the marvelous English Market, a gourmet hub selling fresh produce, meats, cheeses – including hard to find Cashel blue, Ardrahan and Gubbeen – bakery goods, wines and an assortment of Irish food, such as drisheen (blood pudding), crubeen (pigs’ feet) and barmbrack (a fruit and spice bread). Upstairs in a gallery above the market, a tearoom serves sandwiches, cakes and light dishes are served. The market dates from James 1st in 1610, although the present building opened in 1788, restored in the early 1980s.

On a hill overlooking Cork City’s center, St. Anne’s Church is famous for its chiming bells and red and white color scheme created by the use of red sandstone and white limestone. Whenever a member of the McOsterich family, who were responsible for the design and erection of the bell tower, marries anywhere in the world, the bells ring out in honor of the wedding. On top of the bell tower is a weather vane in the form of a salmon representing the fish in the River Lee that flows through the city.

The tower is adorned with a four-faced clock, known by Corkonians as “the four-faced liar” because the time on each face is slightly different during the hour. Because the numbers on the faces of the clock are made of gilded wood, some of the pieces of wood are thicker than others and some hands stick as they go through the hour. But all come together on the hour.

Cork’s Butter Museum stands in a small square near St. Anne’s Church and tells the story of the Cork butter trade. Cork was once the largest butter trading market in the world, and the museum’s exhibition traces both the historic and current dairy culture in Ireland. The exhibition includes traditional and modern butter-making paraphernalia.

Butter churns, Cork Butter Musseum.

On the coast road, about 30 miles from Cork City, is the picturesque village of Timoleague, which hosts a lively festival each August. The ten-day festival includes live street music, pig racing, and competitions for the best costumes.

The village is dominated by the ruins of an ancient abbey, founded by the Franciscan order in 1240 A.D. The monks were dispersed by the Reformation, but returned at the beginning of the 17th century and remained until 1629. The abbey was sacked by British soldiers in 1612, but much of the architecture remains. It’s a romantic ruin perched at the edge of a sea inlet.

Timoleague Abbey ruins.

The verdant countryside of County Cork is typical of southern Ireland: gently rolling pastures of green, green grass, peacefully grazing cows and sheep, richly wooded hills, old stone walls, ruined castles and ancient graves, pretty villages with many a pub, startling views of the sea and remnants of the Celts of yore. Elegant manor houses, some now transformed into small hotels or restaurants, are scattered throughout.

Not far from the village of Rosscarbery, which grew up around a monastery established in the sixth century, is the Dromberg stone circle, a ring of 13 standing stones, considered the finest megalithic stone circle in County Cork. The circle dates from 153 B.C. and is located on a clearing with a beautiful view down towards the sea. West of the circle are the remnants of two huts and a cooking place.

Dromberg stone circle.

Drive out to dramatic Mizen Head, the southwestern point of the Irish mainland, where the lands falls into the sea. A new suspension bridge was opened this past summer to replace the rickety old one leading across a chasm to the old signal station.

Mizen Head.

From the top of the cliff, a visitor sees the Atlantic Ocean break in roiling water and foam over the rocks. Sometimes seals, whales or dolphins come out to play in the sea. Seabirds cover the rocks in great profusion.

An Irish cottage by the sea.

There’s nothing but the Atlantic between Mizen Head and America, beckoning from 3,000 miles away. It’s not hard to imagine the sadness in the hearts of those emigrants from Queenstown as they glanced back at their beautiful green homeland, knowing that, in all likelihood, they would never see it again.

If You Go

Several airlines serve Dublin from the U.S. Aer Lingus is the Irish line, but I recommend Delta, which has particularly courteous and helpful personnel and serves meals across the Atlantic that are actually good enough to eat.

For information on Ireland, contact the Irish Tourist Board at www.discoverireland.com.

If you rent a car, request a small car as Irish roads are not as wide as American roads and country roads, especially unpaved ones, are very narrow. Also, remember to rent an automatic, as opposed to a manual, which requires shifting gears with your left hand.

This article was originally published in 2017.

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