The Ruins of Monte Ne.

The dreams of an American entrepreneur deteriorate by and under the waters of Beaver Lake

A monolith stands on the shore of Beaver Lake. The tower rises three stories above the shoreline, seemingly serene and calm from a distance. On closer approach, the colors shout out, obscenities and names and other graffiti spattered across the face of the structure. If the light hits it just right you can see the graffiti is apparent both inside and out. You can approach it from land or lake, walk right up and inside, where generations of paint have layered the walls in the name of art and defacement.

But why is the structure here? What caused it to be abandoned on the lakeshore? The answer lies between the waters of Beaver Lake and the dream of an entrepreneur with ideas about Utopia.

***

I have heard whispers of Monte Ne all my adult life, but mostly from people who had heard it from others. An old friend who scuba-dived said he had been meaning to get up there for years. An acquaintance told me there was a resort under Beaver Lake that was part sanitorium, part summer camp. It sounded like “The Road to Wellville,” the 1994 movie about a 1920s health resort. A little research and a personal visit would banish those myths and solidify what Monte Ne really was in my mind.

***

The tower is a prominent feature from the ruins of Monte Ne, a resort built just past the turn of the 20th Century, a vision of one William Hope “Coin” Harvey. The entrepreneur came to this area of the Ozarks to build the resort. He purchased 320 acres of what was then called Silver Springs and renamed it Monte Ne -- a name he conjured up from Spanish and Omaha Indian words for mountain and water.

He used some revolutionary ideas in the construction of his resort -- including the utilization of slabs of concrete in many of the structures on the site. He combined this with more traditional construction methods. The two hotels constructed at the resort that made it to completion

were made from logs with tile roofs. These two structures called Oklahoma Row and Missouri Row were at the time the longest log cabins in the world.

He financed the building of the resort through the sale of his writings regarding free silver. His nickname, “Coin,” comes from his most popular work, Coin’s Financial School. He sunk $100,000 dollars (half his own, half from investors) into construction at the site. It wasn’t just about building the hotels. He had retaining walls built along the creek and lagoon and walkways constructed and even had a railroad assembled to run between the resort and Lowell to bring in guests. Those guests would disembark from the train and be escorted by gondola to the resort itself.

He built Arkansas’ first indoor pool in a bathhouse on Silver Creek across the lagoon from the resort. The downtown area he laid out had a livery stable, a bank (which used Harvey’s own scrip instead of American dollars), a grist mill, general store, and post office. His son Tom even ran a newspaper, the Monte Ne Herald, in the town.

The resort was something else in its heyday. I sat down with Shiloh Museum director Allyn Lord to talk about Monte Ne. She literally wrote the book on the subject; her Historical Monte Ne book came out a few years ago and is a great read with lots of photos from the old resort. “Monte Ne was a great destination back in its heyday. This was back before air conditioning. It was really cool down in the valley, even in the summertime.”

But some of Harvey’s ideas just didn’t take well with guests. He had a lights-out at 10 p.m. policy and reportedly wouldn’t allow sick children at the resort. He was a wiley sort. “He wasn’t crazy,” Lord told me. “Some folks think he was, but those were different times.”

It was a great dream, this nirvana in the Ozarks, but it was not to be. Harvey’s bank failed. The railroad went under. His son Hal died and his son Tom took off and left for good. Harvey tried unsuccessfully to run for Congress and his friend Williams Jennings Bryan wasn’t able to find a place for him in the Woodrow Wilson administration. These sort of things could turn anyone’s mind dark.

In February 1920, he published Common Sense, announcing his intention to leave a message for the future in the form of a pyramid. His plans called for a structure that would have been 130 feet high and which would have contained artifacts from the age preserved for the future -- a globe, newspapers, domestic items and things like record players and such. Harvey had a 165 foot retaining wall built, but that’s as far as he got on the structure.

He did, however, complete an unusually shaped amphitheater he planned to rent out to bring in more money for the pyramid’s construction. The twenty foot high, 140 foot long semi-circular structure was built without an architect. It was very irregular but could seat anywhere from 500 to 1000 people at a time.

The Great Depression pretty much ended Harvey’s pyramid dream. By that point he had sold off the hotels, which continued to do business under other operators. The Oklahoma and Missouri Rows spent time as the Ozark Industrial College and School of Theology until 1932.

Harvey wasn’t quite done yet, though. He formed The Liberty Party and gathered together a presidential convention at Monte Ne in 1932, the only presidential convention ever to be held in Arkansas. He expected 10,000 people -- he got just 786 delegates who nominated him as their presidential candidate. The party ended up merging with the Jobless Party and Harvey ended up running independent, coming in 6th in the election with just 800 votes.

He was done. He continued to write his newsletter, The Liberty Bell, until his death in 1936. He was entombed along with his son Hal (who had died in 1903) in a concrete structure, along with many of his books and papers.

The buildings were sold off and used for other purposes -- such as training facilities for the Arkansas Guard and facilities for a girls’ camp.

What truly took out Monte Ne, though, was the encroachment of Beaver Lake. The Corps of Engineers determined in 1960 that the lake would inundate Monte Ne and made moves to buy up the land all around there. The log structure portion of Oklahoma Row was purchased and moved north, where it can still be seen, sagging by the side of Highway 94.

However, the Corps expected Beaver Lake to cover all of the old resort. Those levels fell short, which is why you can view much of what’s left behind today.


***

So what’s left of Monte Ne today? I’d heard my share of rumors, from “it’s completely submerged” to “it’s not worth your time.” But curiosity got the better of me. I did my research, looked up the site on Google Maps and figured out how to get down to it off the highway.

Photographer Grav Weldon joined me for the journey to northwest Arkansas. We passed through Rogers and out Highway 94 to the community that is Monte Ne today. It’s not much -- a collection of houses and mobile homes clustered around the Monte Ne Inn Chicken Restaurant at the intersection of Highway 94 and the Highway 94 Spur -- though we did sight an old fashioned windmill on a lawn.

But where were the ruins of Monte Ne? We found what we thought might be the most accessible point as we came in view of Beaver Lake. With a severe drop-off from the asphalt and no discernible shoulder, Grav asked if I’d stand in the road and divert any traffic that might come around the corner as he went down the bank to capture shots of the tower he could see in the distance.

I was excited about that tower. Being able to see it so clearly meant we had a chance of getting something visual to go with our story. A quarter mile further we found a gravel parking area off to the right side of the road -- and several cars, too. Out we went, out down the most obvious path over a guard rail. There was a sign, undoubtedly something along the lines of “Keep Out” or “No Parking” or something, long painted over.

Usually this would be the point where I’d carefully stand by at said sign while Grav took the big camera and went about his job chronicling places he probably shouldn’t go… but not this time. There were half a dozen people scattered along the path ahead, the path that stretched on to the tower.

Footpaths have been forged in the grass for some time here… and more gives way to concrete, not a sidewalk or roadbed but what turned out to be the roof of the basement section of what was once Oklahoma Row. There was one hole I noticed, big enough to trip into but not wide enough to allow one to fall all the way through.

You can stand on a corner of the building, no guardrail or safety net in place, and potentially trip off and hit the rocks below. The vantage point overlooks what was once Silver Springs below. Now you see houses on the opposite bank, a boat dock and water.

I followed Grav out to the tower. The sun was heading towards a setting in the southwest, nearly behind the tower itself, very bright and blinding. Perhaps that’s why I didn’t see the graffiti until I got close.

There’s all sorts of tags on the outside of the building, mostly around the base of the structure but a few high up around the windows overhead. Daredevils must have taken great pleasure at pointing out how far they got from the portals when they managed to tag out at such precarious angles. It still didn’t prepare me for the inside.

It was like stepping into a kaleidoscope, paint in places a half inch thick where vandals had sprayed their thoughts on the wall. The ceiling, the floor, even the fireplaces had not been spared. Much of the interior was splattered with profanities and crude images -- in fact it took much work to find things to shoot that could be included in this magazine. Through the pane-less windows the far shores of Beaver Lake could be seen, populated with trees and homes. Water light echoes flickered on the ceiling in the front rooms.

There were no staircases -- but through a hole between floors I could see more paint above. Some taggers had obviously taken great joy in climbing up into the top of the structure. “Climbing is discouraged,” Shiloh Museum director Allyn Lord later told us. Yet I found several shots on the internet while compiling this story of people -- even church youth groups -- who see climbing up into the tower as a goal to achieve.

It’s a shame, really. The tower is on the National Historic Register, but there’s no money to restore it or even keep vandals out. “There have been efforts to have it made a state historic site, with no success,” Lord told me. We shared a similar notion, that it would be fantastic if the state could come in and take over the acres currently owned by the Corps of Engineers and make it into some sort of park.

After exploring the rooms inside the tower we walked around the base. It was apparent that people had crawled far under the structure, considering the proliferation of trash and the remnants of a sleeping bag. I would later learn that the old crawl space is usually inundated with water. I can’t imagine why anyone would be interested in crashing underneath.

Off to the west side of the point, we could look back and see what we had been standing on. With the water down we could actually walk right up to what was once the basement of Oklahoma Row.

We waited until a couple managed to come back up from their inspection, then took a look inside. The basement level rooms weren’t used for housing -- except for a small room on the north end of the structure. That room contained a fireplace, a small room with plumbing that had apparently once been a bathroom, and much rubble all over

the floor. We’d later discover that access to that section was usually unavailable.

After that exploration we walked back along the shoreline to the east, passing the tower and following a long pipe that I assumed had once been underground. Time and erosion had washed away the dirt around it.

We came upon an inlet, and while Grav darted down to shoot what was left of the base of the wall I walked back into the woods and found what I assume was once the fireplace for Missouri row. It and a few short staircases are all that remain of the row. You can tell by looking at it how the different mantles sat, all at different angles and all, I assume, with their own conduit through the chimney. This structure too has been tagged with spray paint, though not to the extent of the Oklahoma Row tower.

And next to this remnant in time? A boat ramp into the lake. There were another half-dozen people along the landing, fishing or talking to people who were fishing.

We’d discover later on that we missed one important sight -- that of the tomb of William Harvey and his son Robert, sitting on private land on the opposite side of the boat ramp. The tomb itself is cracked, apparently from being moved when the lake was created to avoid being inundated.

The problem with the location of the ruins is that it’s impossible to shoot them well from the land. Grav and I set off to see if we could find out way around to the other side of the inlet so he could get a better shot.

We doubled back along the highway until we came to a side road. It took us up a decently steep hill on a narrow band of asphalt. The first view through the trees came at a house hanging onto the land above the lake bank. Grav jumped out, went and knocked on the door and asked permission to shoot.

The light was starting to fade, and there were lots of branches in the way, so we looked for another spot to try our luck again. We drove further along and found a side road that ran close to the lakeside. But there still wasn’t a good shot.

Finally Grav asked me to stop -- he’d seen something unusual way out on what appeared to be a peninsula. I sat with the car, watching the neighborhood dogs smell at the wheels and give friendly barks while he jogged through a yard and down a good ways. I caught sight of him later almost a half-mile away right on the edge of the water.

Turns out the little peninsula he was on is usually an island, and if the water was lower you could actually see the top of what was the amphitheater. However, the Corps of Engineers rarely lets the lake get even as low as on that particular day, and there was not much for him to shoot in the fading light of the afternoon.

But what he was able to capture was the vision of the remaining tower, standing on its own in the pinkish glow of the sunset on the point, a final reminder of what Harvey tried to accomplish. It’s not a resort, but it is a remnant of a different time. Will it be saved? That’s a question only more time will answer.

***

Tip: The water levels for Beaver Lake on the day Grav photographed the ruins were at 1120 feet. The top of the amphitheater is clearly visible at 1113 feet. In December, the Army Corps of Engineers issued a notice of low water levels, and those levels fell to 1113 feet the week of Christmas. If you’re interested in viewing the amphitheater and would like to monitor the water levels, you can review a daily water level report here.

***

The Rogers Historical Museum has both an exhibit on Monte Ne at its facility and an on-line exhibit to peruse. Tour “Buried Dreams: ‘Coin Harvey’ and Monte Ne” at the museum, open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Saturday at 301 W. Chestnut in Rogers. Call (479) 621-1117. You can find the online article here.

***

Read this story and much more, including The Birds, in the February 2011 issue of Arkansas Wild.

The 'Cue and The Pie.

DeValls Bluff has been on the culinary map a long time. A really long time. Now, I know why I go -- for some of Ms. Lena’s Whole Pies. Can’t drive through DeValls Bluff without stopping for a chat with Ms. Viv. That’s just the way things are.

But when I tell people to go to DeValls Bluff, I often get the whole “what, you didn’t stop for Craig’s Barbecue?” And my usual answer is “no.” Pie in my book usually trumps barbecue.

Sometimes, though, you gotta stop and have a bite of something hearty. And one Saturday afternoon after a hard day’s work, Grav and I found ourselves in the general vicinity. And he wanted to check the place out. So we dropped in, middle of the afternoon for a bite to eat.

And like most good barbecue joints, Craig’s isn’t a looker. It’s a little whitewashed building on the side of the highway with barely enough parking to spit at. Inside the walls are simple paneling with strange woodland wallpaper strips, the menu’s an ancient letter board on the wall, and the clientele is varied… at least around the lunch hour. We managed to come in when we were the only out-of-towners.

You order at the counter. You just do. You don’t pay, you just tell whoever’s taking your order what you want and you go sit down. She’ll bring you whatever beverage you asked for and disappear in the back of the building, where aromas play in the atmosphere and pans clink and the like.

The thing about that aroma -- it’s somewhat cinnamon scented, not normal for a barbecue joint or sauce in my opinion but that’s what I get out of it. It’s rich, too, but not sweet. I wondered what the sauce would be like.

You don’t go to a barbecue joint to order a cheeseburger -- though there are cheeseburgers on the menu at Craig’s. There are also dinners of beef, pork, chicken, ribs and Polish sausages and of course family packs to take with you. But if you’re hungry from a day of hard work, all you really want to have is a sammich, a BBQ sammich, and here they come in pork ($3.75) and beef ($3.80).

“Mild, medium or hot,” my hostess asked when I asked for that beef sandwich.

“Mild.”

“Chips?”

“No, but I’ll take as much iced tea as you’ll drown me in.”

She didn’t take any lip from me, just glanced over at Grav.

“Um, beef,” he stated.

“Mild, medium or hot?”

“HOT.” I gave him a weird look.

“Chips?”

“No, I’m good, but do you have Mountain Dew?”

She grunted and turned on her foot, waving with her hand towards the dining area. We took this as an indication we should sit.

A moment later she came sweeping through the doors with our beverages in hand, plunking them down on the table and attending to a guy who’d come in for a pickup order. Both of us took after our beverages… that hard day’s work having drained us.

Our hostess started to come out again, but turned in the doorway and started conversing with the guy right behind it. “You sure this is beef?”

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

“Well, which one’s hot?”

He started to answer but I missed that bit as she closed the door again. It wasn’t half a minute later when she came sweeping back through the door with our sandwiches wrapped in wax paper on little Styrofoam plates. And then she was gone again.

Grav resisted shooting the food at first, hunger being such an overwhelming monster. But we got into what we needed to do and shot our sandwiches. They were messy -- very wet with the sauce and the cole slaw. I was afraid to turn mine over for fear of disintegration. For the most part they were identical in appearance -- the hot sandwich looked darker and had darker edges to the brisket within -- and the hot one smelled of Tabasco and black pepper.

One bite told me a lot. Instead of a chopped beef, this was thinly sliced beef brisket, just thick enough to require teeth but not thick enough to be overly chewy. It came in three layers tucked up underneath a pile of sweet slaw and that bun. It was smoky, perhaps a hickory wood smoke.

The sauce, though -- you know, I know people who swear by this sauce, who come from states over to pick up a gallon when they’re around (it’s $20 a gallon, in case you’re wondering). And it is indeed a sauce that would be hard to duplicate. Craig’s sauce ditches the sweet of many regional barbecue joints for a mature, savory sauce spiked with notes of cinnamon and sorghum. I couldn’t tell you for certain what it is, nor would I divulge that secret if I could, but it’s… it’s meaty. Eating a barbecue sandwich at Craig’s feels like eating a hearty meal. It’s a lot of pack to the punch.

We couldn’t stay… we had another appointment down the road. When we were about done with our sandwiches our hostess came back out to us with our check, which we paid up at the table in cash, less than $10 to get us back on the road including the tip left on the table.

We headed down the road and dropped in on Viv at Ms. Lena’s and took home a couple of pies -- a banana cream pie for me and a chocolate pie for Paul -- his favorite chocolate pie in the world..

So there you go, there really are two reasons to stop in DeValls Bluff. You’ll find Craig’s Barbecue right there on Highway 70 -- one of those “you can’t miss it” sort of places on the south side of the road on the west side of town. Ms. Lena’s is just around the corner a block down the road, turn right on Highway 33 and it’s right there on the left. Couple of places you gotta try.

And you can order your own pies from Ms. Lena’s for $13 each (a few like egg custard and strawberry are a wee bit more) and impress the heck out of your company at Christmas. Call (870) 998-7217 — the store’s open Thursday-Saturday 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Duck Gumbo: I wasn't prepared.

You may have wondered at my lack of diligence this past week. It comes primarily from a weekend incident in the research of the Wings Over The Prairie Festival down in Stuttgart. I’m working ahead on a magazine feature for next year… don’t worry, you’ll hear about it when the time comes.

Thing is, part of the event is Duck Gumbo. I recall hearing a certain redheaded producer colleague of mine talk about Duck Gumbo as if it were a calling, a religious event or a frat party and I never could tell if she were joking or not. I went into it thinking it was a simple competition between culinary sorts. Wow, was I wrong.

I went in with a busted camera (dang it, after 70,000 shots the old P50 is all but dead) and a notebook and no idea of what I would encounter in the giant tent that took up a football field’s space on the lot of Producers Rice Mill on Highway 165. Identification shown, wristbands applied and Grav and were tossed into the mass of humanity beyond.

Well, that’s not really right. We went early on, right as the competition began. It’s simple, really -- the competitors each have their own booths, and in those booths they have to come up with a suitable gumbo in just a few hours consisting of half duck and half whatever else they serve up.

But those booths -- now, they’re something else and they consist of everything from a couple of tables and a banner to stories-tall duck blind structures complete with viewing decks on top, often with ladies in skimpy clothes or guys in funny hats throwing beads into the crowd. The creativity in these structures was extreme, and the décor fell between Razorback ultra fandom to duck hunter’s delight to taxidermy havok to… well, anything went.

Early on it was very relaxed -- a couple of hundred people flitting in-between the different stands, chatting with others and nibbling on the provided nibbles. There were a lot of these -- lots of cheese and crackers, sausages and such. One booth had quartered pork barbecue sandwiches, another sausage balls and spinach dip, another salami and olive appetizers on skewers, another beef and bean chili. In-between those croissant-wrapped Lil Smokies and cheese balls with Fritos there were competitors hovering over pots, every different sort of color of roux going from deep brown to bright red to pale green.

And the scents… the lovely smoky scent of sausage and the wild bite of duck combined with all sorts of things -- okra and celery and tomatoes and bell peppers and onions and spices -- slightly different at each stand but still always with that prevalent scent underneath. Duck was getting its due in those pots.

A gentleman from one booth came up to me with a tissue, which he quickly and quietly tucked into my cleavage. I started to issue a protest but he held up a spray gun of water, shot me at the collarbone with it and pressed something to my chest. “This is your first time here, ain’t it?” he asked me.

“Sure is.”
“You stick out like a sore thumb, but that’s okay. You look like a box of Crayons. That’s good.” He pulled away the thing against my chest and pulled the tissue out of my shirt. “What do you think?”

I looked down and saw he’d applied a tie dyed peace sign temporary tattoo. I grinned. “That’s pretty good.”

“I hope I got it right side up. You have a good time.”

Well, it was, interesting. The next booth’s purveyor adorned me with beads. I’d been told upon entering that the event was considered “redneck Mardi Gras” but having experienced Mardi Gras I figured it was a bit too light for that.

Or so I thought. I was about three quarters of the way around my survey round, and I got smacked on the butt. I turned around to see a couple of guys laughing.

“Oh, she’s a noob!” one of them laughed. I smiled and moved on, thinking it was a random incident.

It was not. Over the next couple of hours I’d get smacked numerous times. It seemed like some sort of fraternity rite. But instead of leaving just stinging cheeks, these rascals were leaving stickers. A lot of stickers.

And was this frowned upon? Not at all. In fact, many of the local girls (all in the “uniform” of tight jeans, camoflauge shirt or jacket and knee high boots) were showing off their sticker-bedazzled bottoms. I ran into an old friend, Josh Heffington, who had his cell phone out showing off photos from last year’s debaucle. Among the many shots were those of random bottoms plastered from one hip to the other with a smattering of stickers. Apparently it’s a source of pride.

As the afternoon progressed, smoke hung in the air and the crowd packed out. There were even crowds waiting for use of the portable facilities, housed in a connecting tent, a good three dozen of them in constant use. The hired band started playing in-between updates from the Razorback game. There were lines at the liquor stands (the event is 21 and older only). There were groups of older men and groups of teens chewing the fat and having a good time. In many ways it reminded me of a Jimmy Buffett-haze on a beach. The competition in many ways came second -- just a chance to have a booth and make some gumbo while enjoying one hell of a party.

It was getting too tight to take many photos on the ground. Grav managed to talk one of the guys manning a booth near the epicenter of the event into letting him up on the upper platform. He told me later that while it was awesome to be able to shoot down into the crowd, the platform swayed amidst the activity -- and for someone afraid of heights it was quite a challenge to conquer.
There was just one thing that confused us. Duck Gumbo seemed to be a pretty rockin’ event, sure --

but it overlapped the actual World Championship Duck Calling Competition, which we figured was the main reason everyone was coming to Stuttgart for Wings Over The Prairie anyway. I realized that yes, there were going to be rounds for the competitors in the competition, but there was really no way to be in both places at one time. And we were missing out on that story.

But the allure of Duck Gumbo continued to grow on me. It was coming up on three o’clock, when the cooking was over and the judging would apparently begin. Booth after booth was getting prepared for the big moment. I saw those competition cups go out -- I’m familiar with them from the CASI competition circuit -- and I watched a couple of different booths as they carefully packaged away the judge’s sample of gumbo and sent it off.


And then the floodgates were open for anyone to have themselves a try. Each participant is required to cook up at least three quarts of gumbo but most of the competitors I saw had made gallons, and they were quite generous with samples. A host of six ounce Styrofoam cups appeared like egrets on Lake Conway, each with its own sample of a different duck gumbo in them. Some included tasso, some andouille, some ham, some pork chops. One included summer sausage and possum -- and the guy at that booth dared me to try it. Without the pork in it, I woulda.

I was sorta disappointed, just because I couldn’t try it. Every single gumbo -- even though all gumbos were supposed to be 50 percent or more duck -- every one of them contained some sort of pork. I was out. Dangit.

It didn’t keep me from sampling other things, though, like the scrumptious duck tamales one contestant had set out. He seemed discouraged that no one was trying them. I did -- they were smoky and wonderful and I was glad I’d sampled them.

The crowd was thickening and the clock was ticking. Grav and I actually were planning to wait until the judges had made their announcements, but overhead we heard a guy on the loudspeaker saying the judging itself wouldn’t begin until 4 p.m. Well, that cinched it. We had to go do something on the other story.

And here’s the part where I realized we had come to Stuttgart with an entirely different idea for a story than we’d actually started out to get. Because while there were a lot of people in downtown Stuttgart, they were in the vendor tents and out in the little carnival at the north end of the stretch of Main Street. There weren’t quite a hundred people standing around watching and listening to the World Championship Duck Calling Competition.

We realized why less than half an hour later. Each competitor has 90 seconds to do five calls. They are, for all intents and purposes, the same five calls. And while I’m somewhat used to duck calls, it about drove Grav out of his head. The idea of sitting through it all was just too much. Besides, we had another assignment to catch that afternoon.

So, what am I telling you? Well, if you go to Wings Over The Prairie, you’ll probably want to spend a few minutes watching the duck calling. You’ll certainly want to check out the vendor booths.

But if you’re an adult and you like “a good time” as it were, you really should be over in the parking lot at Producers Rice Mill under the big tent. It’s an event like no other I’ve ever seen in Arkansas, and it’s definitely something you won’t forget any time soon.