Many Arkansas towns and communities feel like they’re living in two eras at once. You can pass through them today and see a quiet main street, a few aging buildings, maybe a handful of homes tucked into the hills. Nothing about them immediately suggests ambition or grandeur. But look a little closer, and you might start to see traces of something bigger that once stood there. In the small town of Sulphur Springs (Benton County), that “something” once rose five stories high. That something was the Kihlberg Hotel.
The Kihlberg Hotel was built by the Sulphur Springs Sanitarium Hotel and Bath Co. and opened for business in May 1909. The five-story building was constructed from native limestone and was designed to be a full-fledged resort and spa. The Kihlberg was among the largest and most modern hotels in Arkansas. It featured more than a hundred rooms, a grand rotunda, a ballroom, and even an elevator.
At the turn of the twentieth century, Sulphur Springs was riding a wave of optimism tied to its mineral waters. Like Hot Springs (Garland County) in central Arkansas, the town believed it could become a destination for visitors seeking health, rest, and luxury. The newly-constructed railroad only strengthened that vision. Suddenly, travelers from Kansas, Missouri, and other nearby states could step off a train and find themselves in a place that promised both healing and comfort. The Kihlberg Hotel was meant to be at the center of it all.
Named for a local promoter connected to the growing popularity of therapeutic bathing and massage, the Kihlberg was built with a specific guest in mind—well-to-do travelers expecting high-end accommodations to match the promise of the mineral springs. For a brief moment, it must have felt to its residents that Sulphur Springs was on the verge of becoming something much larger. But as often happens in life, vision outpaced reality.
The same railroad that opened Sulphur Springs to the world also complicated things. Excursion trains brought crowds, but not the kind the Kihlberg had been designed to serve. Many visitors were working-class travelers drawn by cheap fares, looking for a day trip or a short, affordable stay. Smaller boarding houses and modest hotels fit their needs just fine. The Kihlberg, designed for longer, more luxurious visits, had difficulty filling its rooms.
Then came the setbacks that seem all too familiar in Arkansas’s storied past. Fires damaged the building. The tourism economy began to slip. Changing tastes and new destinations pulled visitors elsewhere. What once looked like a sure thing slowly became uncertain, and eventually unsustainable, the hotel shut it doors.
In 1924, evangelist John Brown (no relation) purchased the Kihlberg Hotel and established what would eventually become John Brown University. When the university failed to gain accreditation, Brown repurposed the former hotel into a high school academy and later a junior college for women. Both efforts struggled to take hold. By 1930, the building had been renamed the Julia Brown School for Children, and in 1937, it took on yet another identity as a military academy.
That chapter, too, was short-lived. In January 1940, a devastating fire swept through downtown Sulphur Springs, and severely damaged the structure. Although the building was rebuilt, it was only restored to its second floor.
In the decades that followed, the former Kihlberg shifted through a variety of uses before eventually passing into private ownership. More recently, there has been occasional discussion about restoring the historic structure, but so far, none of those plans have moved forward.
Today, there’s little to remind visitors of what the Kihlberg once was. The towering structure is gone. The ballroom is silent. The steady stream of guests has long since disappeared. Still, the story hasn’t vanished. It lingers in the quiet way Sulphur Springs holds onto its past. For a short time, this small town reached for something bigger and built it in stone.
Across the Natural State, stories like this are easy to overlook, hidden just beneath the surface—ambitious plans, bold ideas, and dreams that took shape quickly before fading just as fast. They serve as a reminder that history isn’t defined only by what endures, but also by what people dared to try.
And in Sulphur Springs, for a brief period, they reached high and created something truly worth remembering.
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