Hicks Hotel and Store, Rush Road, Yellville, Marion County, AR

2016 HALS Challenge Entry: Documenting National Register Listed Landscapes
Significance: The Hicks Hotel and Store site is a ten-acre property within the Rush Historic District, a former zinc mining community that is now part of the Buffalo National River in north-central Arkansas. From the early 1900s through the late 1920s the Hicks family operated a prominent hotel, livery service, and general store in boom/bust town. Unlike the many fair-weather residents of Rush, the Hicks were determined to make the narrow Ozark mountain valley their home, riding out lean times, family tragedy, and a rapidly declining population until the last remaining family members finally left for California in the 1940s. Their desire for permanence is still evident today in the long-abandoned landscape. Although no buildings remain on the former Hicks property, mortared stone retaining walls, flower beds, and foundations emerge from the tangle of undergrowth in a reclaimed forest, providing a glimpse of the former refinement of the only known designed landscape in Rush, and of the prominent family that created it. The gardens and former buildings were indicative of the period, but they were also an anomaly in Rush, as hastily built wood structures and even tents were the rule in a landscape transformed by and devoted to industry.
Survey number: HALS AR-6
Building/structure dates: 1903 Initial Construction
Building/structure dates: 1915-1916 Subsequent Work
National Register of Historic Places NRIS Number: 87000105