The spring water below Chewaukla Springs Mineral Co. boasted national deliveries, Chicago backers, and an “expert” touting “radioactive medicinal value” for cures as advertised. Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians wrote and sang “Sleepy Water of Hot Springs, Arkansas.”

The weary and worn rested in gazebos, drinking to their health. Before them, encrusted with quartz without and tiled within the wells are fractured windows to the now dark and forbidding water below a forgotten time and place.