Bella Vista featured in vintage magazines

Courtesy Bella Vista Historical Museum This artist rendering of a band playing in Wonderland Cave was included in the Holiday magazine of August 1951.
Courtesy Bella Vista Historical Museum This artist rendering of a band playing in Wonderland Cave was included in the Holiday magazine of August 1951.

The Linebarger Brothers, who opened the Bella Vista Summer Resort in 1917, were struggling to keep the resort going in the 1940s, so they reached out to magazines on the east coast to be included whenever articles were being published about traveling in the Ozarks.

Fun in the Sun magazine began publishing in New York City with Volume 1, Number 1, dated August -- September 1946. It was advertised as "The New Intimate Magazine of Vacationland."

It is not known how long that publication survived, but that first issue carried an article titled "Wonderland Cave, Bella Vista, Ark." The article included a picture of the cave, which was opened as an underground nightclub in 1930, and one of the Sunset Hotel, which opened in 1929. The two-and-a-half-page article talked about other aspects of Bella Vista as well. One paragraph reads, "The climate is ideal at Bella Vista. For the past decade, the average temperature for June, July and August has been 76 degrees, recorded by the U.S. Weather Bureau at Bentonville, Arkansas. It is necessary to sleep under covers at night. Another good feature of the climate is that there are no mosquitos."

Holiday magazine was an American travel magazine published from 1946 to 1977. Originally published by the Curtis Publishing Company in Philadelphia, Holiday's circulation grew to more than one million subscribers at its height, according to www.wikipedia.org. Its August 1951 issue featured a 13-page article titled "The Friendly Ozarks." There was no mention of Bella Vista in the text of that article, but an artist's rendering of a band playing in Wonderland Cave was included. The caption read, "Bella Vista, Ark., has a unique night club in a spacious limestone cave 500 feet underground." (Editor's note: That was just a slight exaggeration in the cave owners' publicity, as visitors entered the cave by going down a set of stairs and then walking about 300 feet on a fairly level pathway to the dance floor.)

In 1940, Frederick Simpich, who was then assistant editor of the National Geographic magazine published in Washington, D.C., and Mrs. Simpich were in Bella Vista, staying for several weeks at the Sunset Hotel. The June 25, 1940, issue of the Linebarger Brothers' newspaper, The Bella Vista Breezes, reported, "Simpich combed the Ozarks in search of material for a forthcoming article on the Missouri and Arkansas Ozarks to be carried by his magazine. Accompanying Simpich back to Washington were several pictures, with a decidedly Ozark flavor, snapped by Miss Lillian Green, private secretary to the Bella Vista management and candid camera artiste, par excellence."

The July 9, 1940, issue of the Breezes reported that Simpich and B.A. Stewart, photographer for the magazine, "arrived in Bella Vista Friday night to secure necessary pictures for an article on the Ozark region, scheduled for publication in the Geographic within a year. A number of shots were made of the Wonderland Cave's interior Saturday night, while the dance was in progress."

However, the article didn't get published until the May 1943, issue of the National Geographic. It was a long article, titled "Land of a Million Smiles," which ran from page 589 through 623, but it contains only one sentence about Bella Vista, on page 612: "On State Road 100, out of Bentonville, is Bella Vista, a popular lakeside resort." The only Bella Vista area picture that was included was one of the Hay Bluffs which is located just north of today's intersection of Highway 71 and Wellington Road. It was featured in the May 19, 2021, issue of the Weekly Vista.

For more information about the history of Bella Vista, visit the Bella Vista Historical Museum at 1885 Bella Vista Way, near the intersection of Highway 71 and Kingsland. Visitors are welcome Friday, Saturday and Sunday, from 1 to 5 p.m.

Photo courtesy Bella Vista Historical Museum The front cover of the May 1943 National Geographic lists the ‘Land of a Million Smiles’ article about the Ozarks.
Photo courtesy Bella Vista Historical Museum The front cover of the May 1943 National Geographic lists the ‘Land of a Million Smiles’ article about the Ozarks.