The late Amos J. Fortner was brought to Eureka Springs by his parents in 1882. He was a young lad with his body twisted with infantile paralysis. Here is his story: “Life in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, was almost unbelievably crude in the early days of 1882 and 1883, three or four years after the ‘healing springs’ were discovered by white men, and the place became a mushroom city of five or six thousand people almost overnight. No water works, no sewer system, no paved streets, no street cars and, of course, no automobiles. “My first memories of the town that was destined to become the leading health resort of the Ozarks are of gangs of men drilling and blasting on the side of the mountain to change Spring street in the vicinity of Sweet and Harding springs. Previous to that time Sweet Spring was in a little hollow far below its present location and almost exactly underneath a high foot-bridge which spanned the ravine. The bridge permitted a short cut from the Crescent Springs district to the down-town area. Somehow they were able to locate the underground flow of water and bring it out to the present street level. Then, of course, the original Sweet Spring went bone dry. I rather believe they relocated the Harding Spring also, but I am not sure of this. So it happens that the convenient locations of some of the springs on Spring street are not entirely the work of nature. “In after years I often saw crowds of people waiting their turns to fill their pails with the good water from Sweet, Harding and Crescent Springs. These scenes would give a new and vivid meaning to a picture on one of the cards I received at Sunday School: ‘Women waiting at the well.’ I would use my childish imagination and wonder if an angel was hidden in some dim corner by the bath house to ‘trouble the water’ so that the people who came to bathe could receive miraculous healing. “Property values in those days were based considerably on the proximity to some good spring. Consequently the homes of the well-to-do people were not located on the hill-tops but on the lower levels where water was plentiful and easy to obtain. We poor folks lived higher up on the hill where rent was cheaper. Generally, we didn’t have to pay any rent at all, but, of course, we had to carry our water a long ways and up the steep hillside. “I recall that my brother, who had an inventive turn of mind, built a rolling water keg so that he could ‘horse’ the water up the mountain side and not have to carry it. My sister and I would frequently help him pull the keg up the steep places on the trail. But living that way on the very tip-top of Eureka’s sun-kissed hills had its compensations. We, the poorest of the poor, did actually ‘look down’ on the poor rich people on the lower levels.