“The city of Eureka Springs owes a great deal of its picturesque and rugged beauty to one man—Powell C. Clayton. He had a vigorous program of creating beauty out of a medley array of tumbledown shacks that dotted the hillsides. Of course, he made enemies with some property owners. Property values were certainly low at that time. My father bought one of the old-time houses and three city lots for $100, paying $5 down and $2 a month. Previous to that time we had lived in at least ten different houses during a five year period. Not one of these houses had a stone or cement foundation except along one edge which rested on the hillside. Usually the building was supported by spindly wood posts, the length determined by the steepness of the hillside. Some of these houses were so high from the ground that we could walk around underneath without bumping our heads. One of them had a southern exposure and it was so high off the ground that the sunshine would reach back far underneath. My mother took advantage of this spot for early spring garden, planting radishes, onions and lettuce. A little later cornfield beans were planted and trained up the posts that supported the house. That year we were eating garden vegetables some weeks earlier than any other family living in northern Arkansas.
“We had to move frequently. The house we lived in would be condemned and an official city demolition crew would tear it down. But always Mr. Clayton would tell my parents of some other house in which we could live, rent free, until it came time to tear it down, then we would move again. At one time when my father was out of town, Mr. Clayton even paid the expenses of our moving. But he was in a hurry that time. He wanted to immediately start clearing the ground for the erection of the Crescent Hotel and our shack was on the spot where the hotel was to be built. Oh how I hated to leave that hilltop!
“The lumber salvaged from the town was not wasted. Many car-loads of used lumber were shipped to western Kansas to build houses and barns for the pioneer families of that region. Many a woman, I have been told, stood at the door of her sod-shanty and wept tears of joy when she saw the ‘old man’ coming with a big wagon load of second-hand pine lumber from Eureka Springs.