2019 Proved the Past Doesn’t Stay Buried and Sometimes Rumors Stem from Fact

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black and white photo of shovels in dirt

Specimen bottles and mass graves. Both were discovered this year. One in Arkansas and the other in Oklahoma. Both prove the past doesn’t stay buried. Eventually it will be dug up.

It also proves that sometimes lore stems from fact. Let’s take a look at these two examples from 2019.

Dr. Baker’s Bottles

1886 Crescent Hotel & Spa collection of bottles from excavation
A cache of the bottles found at the 1886 Crescent Hotel & Spa. Source: Crescent Hotel’s Facebook page.

From 1937-1940, Norman Baker owned the building that is now the 1886 Crescent Hotel & Spa in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. From 1938-1940, he operated it as the Baker Hospital and Health Resort and claimed to have found the cure for cancer.

Which he didn’t. He was a shyster. He’d started out in vaudeville and wound up convicted of mail fraud –due to trying to pass himself off as a medical professional when in fact he was not.

Anyway, as reported in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, “According to Eureka Springs lore, in the hospital morgue, Baker had rows of jars full of samples of tumors that had been removed from patients. A full-page advertisement in the hospital’s magazine included pictures of the jars.”

In February 2019, Susan Benson, the Crescent Hotel’s “landscape artist,” discovered a cache of bottles buried behind the hotel. She uncovered them while starting construction on an archery range.

A man excavating the bottles at the 1886 Crescent Hotel & Spa
Excavating the bottles. Source: Crescent Hotel’s Facebook page.

Many of the bottles still contained fluid –which preliminary tests concluded was “mostly alcohol.” Some also appeared to contain tissue. Others were labeled “Cure #5.”

Example of a specimen filled bottle at the 1886 Crescent Hotel & Spa
An example of one of the specimen-filled bottles. Source: Crescent Hotel’s Facebook page.

Before this find, however, the bottles and rumors that he displayed tumors he’d removed from patients was only that –rumors. This helped verify that.

If you want to see the bottles, they’re on display in the Crescent’s morgue, which you can see during one of the hotel’s ghost tours.

Boo-k It!

The Crescent Hotel and Spa The Crescent Hotel and Spa

Located in Eureka Springs Historic District, this spa hotel is within a 5-minute walk of St. Elizabeth of Hungary Catholic Church and Frog Fantasies Museum. Intrigue Theater and Eureka Springs City Auditorium are also within 15 minutes.

1921 Tulsa Race Massacre

White mob with guns in open car during Tulsa Race Riots
Source: 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission’s Facebook Page

Did you watch HBO’s Watchmen? That’s how I first learned about a racially motivated incident that happened in Tulsa in 1921.

Sort of.

I wasn’t sure the series was based on fact, though. How come I’d never heard about it? That seemed like a pretty significant event. One I would’ve remembered studying in school.

Maybe I didn’t learn about it, but it was something Oklahomans sure knew about.

At my husband’s Christmas party at the beginning of December, he introduced me to one of his firm’s new partners and his wife. They’d recently moved from Tulsa.

Me, being my usual inappropriate cocktail party talk-self, said, “Oh! I’m watching a series on HBO set in Tulsa.”

Okay, so it started out tame. But it rapidly deteriorated after the wife said, “About Tulsa? You’d think I’d have heard of that.”

This where I made it awkward: “I’m not sure it’s something you’d watch. It’s pretty intense really. I mean, it’s sort of a superhero show based on a comic book I believe, but it’s very racially sensitive. It all starts when the Ku Klux Klan raids a black neighborhood and starts killing everyone.”

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Do I know how to do small talk or what?

After clearing their throats and looking a bit embarrassed, they said they knew exactly what I was talking about. The 1921 Race Riots. The massacre had happened in what was called the Black Wall Street. Lots of middle and upper middle class black people living, working and thriving in the Greenwood area of Tulsa. The Klan burned it all to the ground.

It’s apparently among the worst incidents of racial violence in U.S. history. I have learned about similar massacres in Georgia and Florida through my travels, but this one shocked me.

Photograph with handwritten message about Little Africa on fire from Tulsa Race Riot
Source: 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission’s Facebook Page
Ruins of burned buildings from Tulsa Race Riot
Source: 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission’s Facebook Page
Burned aftermath of Black Wall Street after Tulsa Race Riots
Source: 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission’s Facebook Page
Handwritten notes on a photograph detailing where businesses were located after Tulsa Race Riot
Source: 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission’s Facebook Page

Another thing that shocked me was the wife had said the race riot was a blight on Oklahoma’s history, and dozens had died, but it had long been thought it could’ve been many more. Maybe even in the hundreds.

Shortly after the Christmas party, like about a week later, a story broke about how geophysical scanning identified two possible mass graves that could contain many more previously unknown bodies from that massacre. Talk about a weird twist of serendipity.

Will the city go ahead with an excavation effort to find out? That’s what a committee has to decide.

So technically this one is a developing story. However, in a way it did unearth and bring to light a part of history others didn’t know about it. Sadly. (Because surely I’m not alone in just learning about all of this?)

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Were there any stories like this from the past year about the past being dug up that shocked you?

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4 Comments

  1. I had heard of the Tulsa riots. Awful stuff.

    How terrible for all of Baker’s patients who got their hopes up only to learn, in the end, that it was a sham.

  2. Two outstanding stories on historic lore that I knew nothing about until reading above. Now my curiosity is peaked and I need to dig for more information. Thank you again for sharing.

  3. Author

    Oh YAY! I’m so glad to hear you found them interesting too!!!

  4. Author

    This is what breaks my heart. Preying on people who are so vulnerable and desperate and suffering. I hope they found peace after their passings.

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