I found this picture on Pinterest a while ago and it’s always struck me as a little odd. Was it a real bar? First I searched “Arkansas Travelers Saloon” and began finding dozens of other photographs of people posing in front of the same backdrops. That’s bizarre, I thought with narrowed eyes…
But then today I found my answer, along with an ever bigger collection of similar photographs…
As it turns out, the Arkansas Traveler’s Saloon was sadly not a real bar, but in fact a popular photography set at the Happy Hollow amusement park in Hot Springs Arkansas. It was the area’s most popular tourist attractions from the late 1800s up until the 1940s, which initially began as a picture studio and gradually developed into an early amusement park. The park no longer exists today, but these photographs I found on a local Arkansas genealogical website give us a pretty good idea of a typical day at Happy Hollow…
Smile, you’re at the saloon!
I enjoyed reading all the little signs in each photograph…
This was one of the oldest looking photos in the collection and it really gave me the chills ↑
Photos found on The Melting Pot.
