Blue Spring Shelter

The Blue Spring Heritage Center, formerly the Eureka Springs Gardens, is a tourist attraction containing native plants and hardwood trees in a setting of woodlands, meadows, and hillsides. It is located at Highway 62 West, five miles (8 km) west of Eureka Springs, Arkansas, USA, and open daily to the public during warmer months for a fee. The spring pours 38 million US gallons (140,000 m³) of water daily into the trout-filled lagoon. Blue Spring has been a tourist attraction since 1948, and is now on the National Register of Historic Places for its archaeological significance as a site occupied between the Early Archaic and the Mississippian periods. Historians from several Indian nations, including the Tsalagi (Cherokee), Osage and Quapaw, say their people have been making journeys to, and living intermittently at Blue Spring for tens of thousands of years. Artifacts excavated at the Blue Spring Shelter support this, as they date back to between 8000 B.C. and A.D. 1500.