Researching the column that ran in last Saturday’s Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, I found myself intrigued by the rich history of the Arkansas wine country.

I also found myself looking at how much other states have capitalized on the allure of their wineries, attracting prosperous baby boomer couples in the process.

I asked these questions:

1. Why do we not more actively promote an Arkansas Wine Trail that winds from Altus to Paris?

2. Why don’t we have large brown signs (the kind you would see for a state park) with perhaps a bunch of purple grapes on them at the Altus exit on Interstate 40 to better promote this unique part of our state?

3. Why hasn’t some investor built a small but upscale boutique hotel near Altus to take advantage of the Arkansas wine country?

Far too often, we take fascinating parts of our Arkansas heritage for granted.

“It has always been here,” we tell each other about this or that attraction. “Why should we go out of our way to promote it?”

Sometimes, it takes outsiders to tell us that the things we take for granted are truly special.

Returning from a speaking engagement in Fort Smith last Thursday, I stopped at the beautiful tasting room for Chateau Aux Arc near Altus. It’s the newest of the area’s wineries, born in 1998 when young Audrey House bought 20 acres from Al Wiederkehr, and it has the nicest tasting room, a 5,400-square-foot facility built in 2005. I listened as a couple on their way from Oklahoma back to their home along the Mississippi Gulf coast in Jackson County raved about the beauty of the area.

If they knew its history, they would be even more enchanted. And if that boutique hotel existed, they might have even spent the night.

Altus was incorporated as a city in August 1888. Railroad officials had named their railhead Altus, the Latin word for high, since this was the highest point on the Little Rock & Fort Smith Railroad.

A Frenchman named Jean Baptiste Dardenne had first claimed the area in June 1814. Five years later, the U.S. government ordered white settlers out of the region so the Cherokee tribe could have title to the land. An 1828 treaty, however, removed members of the tribe from Arkansas to what’s now Oklahoma. Franklin County was carved out of Crawford County in 1837, and the courthouse was placed at Ozark.

“The Altus area, like the rest of the state, was devastated by the Civil War, especially the depredations of guerilla warfare,” Lola Shropshire writes on the online Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture. “It took years for the population to overcome the hunger and poverty. Farming was not productive enough to keep families wholly fed and clothed. When large-scale coal mining began in the area in 1873, the mine owners found many willing workers in the Altus area. The major coal-producing mines were not within the Altus city limits but were important to the economy of the area.”

So coal mining began in a big way in 1873. A year later, the original Altus passenger train depot was built. Between railroad jobs and jobs in the mines, there was plenty of work. That demand for labor, in turn, attracted Swiss and German immigrants.

Jacob Post, a German who first had tried to grow grapes in Illinois, showed up in Arkansas in 1880.

That same year, Johann Andreas Wiederkehr came from Switzerland and carved a wine cellar from a hillside.

Post and Wiederkehr found an outlet for their wine — the Swiss and German immigrants who were were accustomed to having wine with their meals. They sold the wine to these coal miners, railroad workers and other immigrants.

Things would change in the 20th century. The last passenger train departed Altus in May 1936. In 1940, the last major coal mine closed. There are no longer railroad and mining jobs. But the descendants of Jacob Post and Johann Andreas Wiederkehr continue to produce wine. And therein lies the present and hopefully an even brighter future for this slice of Arkansas.

Heritage tourists tend to spend more than other tourists, which is why we need to exploit the Swiss-German heritage and give these visitors a reason to stay in Altus a night or two. The bank in Altus was even known as the German American Bank in the early 1900s before anti-German sentiment during World War I forced the name to be changed to the Bank of Altus. The building that housed the bank is now a museum.

In 1927-28, Chicago millionaire J.H. Jacobson bought seven farms on Pond Creek Mountain to build cabins that he hoped would attract other wealthy Chicago residents each summer. The Great Depression, however, put an end to those efforts.

Altus received some nationwide publicity in 2001 when Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchie showed up to film the reality television show “The Simple Life.” But rather than a charming wine-growing region with a Swiss-German heritage, the area was pretty much portrayed as backwoods Arkansas on that show.

As I stated in the newspaper column, I thought House’s arrival in 1998 following her graduation from the University of Oklahoma was far more significant than the short stay of the spoiled rich girls, Hilton and Ritchie. The three existing wineries in 1998 — Wiederkehr Wine Cellars, Post Familie Vineyards & Winery and Mount Bethel Winery — have tradition on their side. House, though, brought new blood, new energy and some new ways of doing things.

The website www.chateauauxarc.com tells this story: “Along the way, Audrey met and worked closely with members of the other local wineries. One of those people was Thomas Post, who runs the farm and vineyards for Post Familie and who offered Audrey invaluable advice as she learned the ins and outs of vineyard cultivation. It soon became apparent that Audrey and Thomas shared more than just an interest in grapes when their respect and admiration for one another bloomed into a romance and then ultimately into their November 2002 marriage.

“Audrey’s personal and professional growth has continued on a steady course since that day. Once wed, she turned the building that served as her house into a new tasting room with space for a gift shop and began gaining notoriety for being the youngest vintner in the country as well as the newest winemaker in Altus. In 2004, two more significant changes occurred: the first, the birth of Thomas and Audrey’s first child, Trinity, in June, followed by the September groundbreaking of a new, more spacial tasting room at Dragonfly Ranch.

“One year later, Audrey unveiled her current tasting room — a European-style building, accented by stacked rock columns, fit to be called by the name chateau. A dry moat, stone walkways and flowerbeds galore surround the impressive structure on the edge of Dragonfly Ranch’s manicured vineyards. Picnic tables scattered throughout the grounds complement the experience, beckoning visitors to soak in the atmosphere.”

Chateau Aux Arc even markets the facility for weddings.

Another part of the website tells the story this way: “Born in 1976, Audrey is the oldest daughter of Byron House III. She is one of the youngest winery owners in the United States, as well as the only female winemaker in Arkansas. Dividing her childhood between Arkansas and Oklahoma, Audrey came to appreciate the scenic beauty of Northwest Arkansas and the Arkansas River Valley. Audrey is part Tom Sawyer. Who else could convince their friends that it would be fun living in tents in the middle of a vineyard during the summer of 1998.”

We should be glad they did just that.

Just west of Paris, meanwhile, Robert Cowie and his children carry on the tradition at Cowie Wine Cellars, which originally was bonded in 1967. It’s also the home of the Arkansas Historic Wine Museum, which contains a number of winemaking artifacts. There’s also a two-unit bed and breakfast facility with rates of $90 for the Cynthiana Suite and $125 for Robert’s Port Suite.

Cynthiana, also known as Norton, is a native American grapevine that is more disease resistant and adaptable to the climate in the Ozarks than many of the imported grapevines.

And if you’re wondering about Robert’s Port, it’s the port wine that is one of the items for which Cowie Wine Cellars is known.

The Cowie website at www.cowiewinecellars.com states: “Arkansas has a rich heritge of winemaking dating from the time of the earliest settlers. Though the present, there have been 150 wineries bonded in Arkansas by the federal government since the repeal of Prohibition and more than 1,000 Arkansas permits issued for winemaking.”

Can’t we do more to attract visitors to the scenic, historic Arkansas wine country and its five commercial wineries?

It has been fun researching the colorful characters attracted to the Arkansas Ozarks through the years.

What is it about the hills of north Arkansas that attract the Norman Bakers and the Gerald L.K. Smiths of the world?

William Hope “Coin” Harvey has always been one of my favorite characters from Arkansas’ past. Harvey, the 1932 presidential nominee for something called the Liberty Party, was born in Virginia in 1851 and admitted to the bar at age 19. He practiced law in West Virginia, Ohio and Illinois before heading to Colorado in 1884, where he operated a silver mine that made him a wealthy man.

Gaye Bland picks up the story in the online Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture: “When the price of silver fell, Harvey abandoned mining and in 1888 moved his family to Pueblo, Colo., where he practiced law, sold real estate and helped develop the Mineral Palace, an ornate exposition hall. By 1891, the family moved to Ogden, Utah, where Harvey led the organization of an extravagant carnival that ended in financial failure.

“In the early 1890s, as the nation entered a period of deflation, bank failures, bankruptcies and farm foreclosures, Harvey turned his attention to the free silver issue. Like other Western business leaders, he believed that abandoning the gold standard and returning to the free coinage of silver would restore prosperity. In 1893, Harvey moved his family to Chicago to devote his time to the cause. He began writing and lecturing, arguing that the U.S. treasury should buy all silver offered at a set price and issue silver certificates backed by the deposits.”

Harvey wrote an extremely successful book called “Coin’s Financial School” in 1894. That book gave him his nickname. Harvey campaigned hard in the 1896 presidential race for William Jennings Bryan. That campaign brought him to the Arkansas Ozarks. In 1900, Harvey began purchasing land southeast of Rogers and announced that he would build a major resort. He named the area Monte Ne, which he said were Spanish and Native American words for “mountain” and “water.”

The Hotel Monte Ne opened in 1901. The state’s first indoor swimming pool, a tennis court and two additional hotels were added in the years that followed.

“In 1913, Harvey formed the Ozark Trails Association,” Bland writes. “Although the association’s stated purpose was the promotion of better roads, Harvey’s goal was the promotion of Monte Ne. The OTA marked routes, published route books and erected obelisks that were lettered with the distance and direction to Monte Ne at major junctions. Despite the efforts, the association did little to increase business at the resort. Like many resorts, Monte Ne suffered with the growth of automobile travel and in the 1920s most of the resort was closed or foreclosed.”

Harvey continued to write books and became convinced that the end of civilization was near. He decided to build a 130-foot pyramid before civilization ended. The project was never completed. Its ruins are now under the waters of Beaver Lake and can be seen when water levels are low. Harvey began the Liberty Party in 1931 as an alternative to the two major parties. He was 80 years old when the party’s delegates came to Monte Ne and nominated him for president.

“The party platform was based on Harvey’s writing and called for government ownership of utilities and industry, limits on land holdings and personal wealth and, of course, free silver,” Bland writes. “When the votes were tallied, he was in sixth place.”

Harvey received only about 53,000 votes nationwide. Arkansas produced 1,049 of those votes.

Harvey died at Monte Ne in February 1936. He was buried beside his son in a concrete tomb, which had to be moved up the hill before Beaver Lake was filled.

A sidelight: Though most of Harvey’s former resort is under water, the name Monte Ne lives on in a small community by the lake that’s home to one of my favorite restaurants. At the Monte Ne Inn on Arkansas Highway 94, the family-style menu consists of bean soup, mashed potatoes and gravy, corn, green beans, fried chicken and homemade bread with apple butter. There’s no menu. If you go, this is what you’ll get. And it’s all you can eat.

Decades after the death of “Coin” Harvey, Anita Bryant found her way to Eureka Springs. Bryant, now 70, became an entertainment sensation in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Her song “Paper Roses” reached No. 5 on the Billboard charts.

Bryant was named Miss Oklahoma in 1958 and was the second runner-up in the Miss America pageant. After her singing career took off, she was voted for three consecutive years by the readers of Good Housekeeping magazine as the most admired woman in America. Florida citrus growers hired her in 1968 as their spokesman, a job she would hold for a dozen years. Those of us of a certain age remember the television ads in which she proclaimed, “Breakfast without orange juice is like a day without sunshine.”

In 1973, Bryant even sang at Lyndon Johnson’s funeral. She also appeared in ads for Coca-Cola, Kraft Foods, Holiday Inn and Tupperware. Her success led Florida Gov. Reubin Askew to quip, “People connect orange juice, Florida and Anita Bryant so much that it becomes difficult to decide which to visit, which to listen to and which to squeeze.”

Her career faltered, however, after she became a spokesman for anti-gay rights efforts in the late 1970s. Her citrus contract was not renewed, she divorced her husband Bob Green and then she moved from Florida back to Oklahoma.

In 1990, Bryant married Charlie Hobson Dry, a former test crewman for NASA. She moved to the Arkansas Ozarks in the early 1990s and opened her Eureka Springs theater. In 1997, however, Bryant and Dry filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in Arkansas. There were more than $172,000 in unpaid state and federal taxes at the time. She also performed during the 1990s in Branson, where government liens were filed claiming more than $116,000 in unpaid taxes.

A 2002 story in the St. Petersburg Times described her as someone who spent her later years in “small entertainment capitals across the Bible Belt, gamely attempting a comeback but leaving backruptcy and ill will in her wake.”

By 1998, Bryant and her husband had made their way to Pigeon Forge, Tenn., where they bought the 2,040-seat Music Mansion.

The 2002 St. Petersburg Times story told of “dozens” who “labored, often for weeks or months without pay, to produce Bryant’s jaunty, top-tapping show, ‘Anita With Love.'”

“They were always telling us God’s going to come through,” one former dancer said. “They would attach his name to everything and if we didn’t believe them, we didn’t have faith. It didn’t have anything to do with God. We knew their track record.”

The newspaper reported in 2002, “Among the jilted employees is a woman who appears on Bryant’s website as the president of her fan club. She is owed about $3,000. The Music Mansion — once the gem of the folksy Pigeon Forge theater scene — was auctioned off this month. Only eight years old, its facade is showing wear from poor maintenance. The landscaped islands on its vast, empty parking lot are overrun with dandelions.”

Bryant’s official biography on the website for Anita Bryant Ministries International (the biography appears to have last been updated in 2006) notes: “Anita is now sharing an office in the historic Oklahoma City’s Bricktown with Charlie. The offices house the new Anita Bryant Ministries International Inc. along with Charlie’s Space Camps and other business ventures. Anita is excited about being back home in Oklahoma and believes her latter days will be greater than in the beginning.”

Just like “Coin” Harvey, her road show made its way at one point to the Arkansas Ozarks.

Glen Jeansonne, a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee since 1978, begins a profile on Gerald L.K. Smith for the Wisconsin Magazine of History this way: “In August 1936, Gerald L.K. Smith addressed a packed Cleveland stadium at the convention of Father Charles E. Coughlin’s National Union of Social Justice. The afternoon was hot, and the audience sweltered. Smith, sweating profusely, stripped off his coat and tie and gulped directly from a pitcher of water without bothering to use a glass.

“The theme of his speech was the iniquity of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Smith claimed that the policies of FDR’s administration represented ‘the most historic and contemptible betrayal ever put over on the American people. … Our people were starving and they burned the wheat, hungry and they killed the pigs, led by Mr. Henry Wallace, secretary of the Swine Assassination and by a slimy group of men culled from the pink campuses of America with friendly gaze fixed on Russia.’ The audience roared.”

Yes, Gerald L.K. Smith.

The same Gerald L.K. Smith who built the seven-story Christ of the Ozarks in Eureka Springs back in the 1960s (why do I always think of George Fisher’s classic editorial cartoon of Frank Broyles — Frank of the Ozarks?).

Jeansonne goes on to write that during the 1930s, in the midst of the Great Depression, Smith “addressed more and bigger live audiences than any speaker of his generation. They rarely left disappointed. With his beak-shaped nose and piercing blue eyes, standing 6 feet tall and weighing over 200 pounds, he was a dynamo, an extraordinary demagogue who swayed thousands and infuriated millions. His crisp voice, his spontaneous gestures, his transparent zealotry fixated audiences. Routinely, Smith was mesmerizing, though often vacuous. His oratory impressed crowds, raised emotions, thrilled the masses.”

William Bradford Huie wrote this about Smith: “The man has the passion of Billy Sunday. He has the fire of Adolf Hitler. … He is the stuff of which Fuehrers are made.”

Huey P. Long called him “the only man I ever saw who is a better rabble-rouser than I am.”

H.L. Mencken wrote: “Gerald L.K. Smith is the greatest orator of them all, not the greatest by an inch or a foot or a yard or a mile, but the greatest by at least two light years. He begins where the best leaves off.”

It was little wonder that Smith was asked to deliver Long’s funeral oration in Baton Rouge before a crowd of more than 150,000 people in September 1935 following Long’s assassination.

“This tragedy fires the souls of us who adored him,” Smith said that day. “He has been the wounded victim of the green goddess; to use the figure, he was the Stradivarius whose notes rose in competition with jealous drums, envious tomtoms. He was the unfinished symphony.”

Smith, who was just 37 at the time of Long’s death, first had come Louisiana as the pastor of the Kings Highway Disciples of Christ Church in Shreveport in 1929. Smith resigned from the church after seven months and hooked up with Long, eventually becoming a key national organizer for Long’s Share-Our-Wealth Society. That wealth redistribution group was to have been the launching pad for Long’s planned 1936 presidential campaign.

After Long’s assassination, Smith hooked up with retired physician Francis Townsend and Father Coughlin to create the Union Party. Smith later would run unsuccessfully several times for the U.S. Senate and the presidency. His final bid for the presidency was in 1956 as the Christian Nationalist Party candidate. By then, Smith was primarily supported by those on the far right extreme of the political spectrum — anti-Semitic and fascist activists.

Back in 1933, Smith had written the following to a man named Hugo Fack, who had journeyed to Germany and met with Nazi leaders: “I am anxious to get in touch with his Honor, Adolf Hitler, but knowing that you are recently removed from Germany, before doing so I desire your opinion on conditions in that country. They look good to me. Can you give me a code for getting in touch with Herr Hitler or one of his representatives in America?”

Soon after quitting his job as a pastor in Shreveport, Smith also had been attracted to American Nazi William Dudley Pelley and his paramilitary Silver Shirts. Many years later, Smith would settle in Detroit and become friends with Henry Ford, who financed a series of Smith’s radio broadcasts. Smith began a monthly publication called The Cross and the Flag in 1942 and continued to publish it until his death in 1976.

In the early 1960s, the Arkansas Ozarks remained mired in poverty. Eureka Springs was a mere shadow of the grand resort it had been in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Anyone looking to invest money was welcome. It was this world that Smith entered in 1964.

“Smith came to Arkansas and bought Penn Castle, a Victorian mansion in Eureka Springs, an Ozark Mountain spa town that had lapsed into economic stagnation,” Jeansonne wrote for the University of Arkansas Press. “He remodeled it lavishly, turning it into his retirement home. Two years later, he built the first of his Sacred Projects, a seven-story statue of Jesus, the Christ of the Ozarks, on Magnetic Mountain. Smith proclaimed that it was more beautiful than Michelangelo’s art. Disagreeing, an art critic likened it to a milk carton with a tennis ball stuffed on its top.

“Soon Smith added the Christ Only Art Gallery, a Bible museum and a passion play staged in an outdoor amphitheater. The play was performed on a 400-foot reproduction of a street in old Jerusalem and included live animals. By 1975, the theater was expanded from 3,000 seats to 6,000 seats, and more than 188,000 had watched the play, making it the largest outdoor pageant in the United States. Jews denounced the play as anti-Semitic, but Smith called it ‘the only presentation of its kind in the world which has not diluted its content to flatter the Christ-hating Jews.’ The Sacred Projects helped revitalize the Eureka Springs area.”

The first performance of what was known as The Great Passion Play was on July 15, 1968. That first season attracted 28,000 people.

Smith announced that he would build a $100 million replica of the Holy Land, including a model of the River Jordan in which people could be baptized. Before that project could be completed, he died of pneumonia in April 1976 at his winter home in California.

“The Sacred Projects gave Smith some respectability but could not obscure the anti-Semitism and hatred for which he was most known,” Jeansonne writes. “He maintained that Jesus was a Gentile whom Jews crucified; that Presidents Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower were Jews; that Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler was a Bolshevik and a Jewish foil; that Jews invented communism; and that Jews prodded African-Americans to begin the civil rights movement to jolt a tranquil American society. Smith lamented that he was castigated only becuase he was emboldened to air such issues.”

The play he started in Eureka Springs continues, though it now markets itself as The New Great Passion Play. The nonprofit organization that produces the play, now governed by a board of directors, says the efforts to build a model of the Holy Land are ongoing.

At the website www.greatpassionplay.com, it’s noted that the “New Holy Land Tour includes one of the world’s only complete life-size reproductions of Moses’ Tabernacle in the Wilderness, as well as 37 other authentic exhibits. In 1976, the Smith Memorial Chapel was built in honor of Gerald L.K. and Elna M Smith. Many other unique attractions, such as the Sacred Arts Center, a piece of the Berlin Wall, performances of the Parable of the Potter and more have been added throughout the years. Be sure and visit the Bible Museum and its remarkable collection of historical Bibles and documents.”

Following Smith’s death in 1976, the Arkansas Gazette editorialized: “To have the power to touch men’s hearts with glory or with bigotry, and to choose the latter, is a saddening thing.”

It’s good that the Crescent Hotel & Spa at Eureka Springs recalls the tainted legacy of that old con man Norman Baker by naming its fourth-floor restaurant and lounge after him.

After all, it wouldn’t be the Ozarks without the eccentrics and the con men.

Baker, a charlatan if ever there were one, operated a “hospital” out of the Crescent Hotel during the final years of the Great Depression.

There were plenty of other colorful characters who later were lured into the Arkansas Ozarks.

Jew hater Gerald L.K. Smith showed up in Eureka Springs in 1964 to begin building what he referred to as his Sacred Projects.

And even Anita Bryant — she of orange juice and anti-gay fame — made an appearance in the 1990s to operate a music theater that was bankrupt by 1997 while owning thousands of dollars in back taxes.

Of course, just down the road in Benton County, William H. “Coin” Harvey developed Monte Ne (complete with a gondola from Italy to ferry tourists across a spring-fed lagoon from a depot to the hotel he had built). Harvey announced plans in the 1920s to build a 130-foot-tall pyramid. He never completed that project, but he did build an amphitheater that was to have been the pyramid’s foyer. Most of Monte Ne is now below the waters of Beaver Lake.

As for Norman Baker, he was a fixture on the vaudeville circuit in the early 1900s. He later built a radio station in Iowa in 1925 with the call letters KTNT. Those letters stood for Know The Naked Truth. He also published something called TNT Magazine. Baker used the radio station and the magazine to attack established medical procedures and the American Medical Association.

President Hoover helped launch Baker’s tabloid newspaper in 1930 by participating in a publicity stunt in which the president pushed a “golden key” from Washington to “start” Baker’s printing press in Iowa.

Baker had no formal education but called himself Dr. Baker. He opened a hospital in Iowa where he claimed he could cure cancer. When the federal government shut down his radio station, Baker headed to Mexico to operate a station known as XENT just across the U.S. border.

Baker finally was convicted of federal mail fraud in 1940 three years after buying the Crescent Hotel. His promises to cure cancer had been sent through the mail, and that constituted mail fraud. He died in 1958 in Miami.

The website www.exploresouthernhistory.com describes the Baker years in Arkansas this way: “When the popularity of bathing in mineral springs faded, hard times came to the beautiful hotel. It fell into disrepair during the years of the Great Depression and ultimately fell into the hands of an eccentric character named Norman Baker. … A radio station owner and former manager of a mind reading show, Baker came to Eureka Springs from his home in Iowa to promote his secret cancer cure. Converting the Crescent Hotel, which he called his Castle in the Air, into a dubious medical facility, he brought in patients and, for the right price, subjected them to a variety of strange procedures.

“Attracted by Baker’s claims of a cancer cure, desperate patients flocked to the facility. In fact, federal investigators later determined that he made more than $4 million peddling his fake cure during the darkest days of the Great Depression.”

Baker was the youngest of 10 children. He quit high school at age 16 in 1898 to take a job as a machinist. Baker decided to change professions one night after watching a magic show featuring a performer who went by the name of Professor Flint.

Baker had his own performance troupe by 1904. The show starred a mind reader called Madame Pearl Tangley. Madame Tangley quit the show in 1909 and was replaced by Theresa Pinder, who married Baker a year later.

During the summer of 1914, Baker was tinkering in his brother’s machine shop in Iowa when he came up with an organ that played with air rather than steam. He called it the Air Calliaphone and sold the first one for $500. He quickly sold two more and soon was wealthy. By 1915, Baker had closed his vaudeville show, divorced his wife and become a full-time manufacturer of organs. He was making more than $200,000 a year. In 1920, he opened an art correspondence school that earned him more than $75,000 in three years.

KTNT went on the air on Thanksgiving Day 1925. In 1928, the station received permission to broadcast at 10,000 watts rather than its original 500 watts. KTNT soon became one of the most popular radio stations in the Midwest.

In his well-researched history called “Pure Hoax: The Norman Baker Story,” Stephen Spence writes: “On weekends and holidays thousands would gather at the station to hear Norman’s broadcasts. Baker welcomed the crowds with live entertainment as well as souvenirs, food and cheap gasoline. All for a fair price, of course. As KTNT’s popularity grew, Norman’s attacks on his usual targets became more vitriolic and personal. He made baseless personal attacks on prominent men he considered enemies, accusing them over the airwaves of everything from adultery to drunkenness. This behavior began to turn people against him and there was a backlash of complaints against KTNT.”

Baker opened his first cancer center, the Baker Institute of Muscatine, Iowa, in 1930. He used his radio station to promote his so-called miracle treatments.

Spence tells this sad story: “In the spring of 1930, John Tunis’ wife Lula was dying of cancer. In his private moments, he must have alternately begged God not to take his wife and cursed him for letting her suffer such a cruel end. By the end of May, Lula was running out of time. John placed her and their dwindling hopes in the hands of a man named Norman Baker. They prayed he could provide the cure that the medical establishment could not.

“And by all appearances they had reason to hope. Norman Baker was the founder of the Baker Institute in Muscatine, Iowa. He was a flamboyant medical maverick with a new cure for cancer. Always dressed in a white suit and a lavender tie, he owned a radio station in Muscatine with the call letters KTNT. … He took to the airwaves and declared war on big business and the American Medical Association. He believed that organized medicine was corrupt and chose profits over patients. He preached the gospel of alternative medicine. He was the self-proclaimed champion of the common man against the ownership class. He was on the Tunis’ side, and he had a cure.

“It is doubtful that John and Lula could have known much about the background of their ostensible savior. That he was a former vaudeville magician, turned inventor, turned millionaire businessman, turned populist radio host, turned cancer doctor without a day of medical training in his life. They couldn’t have known that Norman’s magic elixir was nothing more than a useless mix of watermelon seed, brown corn silk, alcohol and carbolic acid. They clearly didn’t know that all Norman Baker had to offer was an excruciating, pseudo-treatment and a betrayal of their last hope.”

John Tunis would later testify in a trial against Baker that his wife “took the needle treatments. She told me it was awful, that five or seven needles a day were stuck into her and they would hold them there until the medicine ran out. She said it didn’t do much good; said she wanted to go home; that she was getting worse.”

The American Medical Association led the fight against Baker, and the government refused to renew his radio license in May 1931. An arrest warrant was filed for practicing medicine without a license, and Baker fled to Nuevo Larado, where he remained until 1937, operating his Mexican radio station there at 100,000 watts. He returned to Muscatine in 1937, pled guilty to the old charge and served a one-day sentence. That’s when he moved to Eureka Springs, bought the Crescent and took up where he had left off in Iowa.

Baker was arrested in 1939. His trial was held in January 1940 in Little Rock, and he was found guilty on all seven counts. His appeal was denied, and Baker was sent to Leavenworth in Kansas to serve out his term. He was released from prison in July 1944, moving to Florida and living comfortably until his death in 1958.

Spence writes: “What made Norman Baker’s cancer cure charade so despicable is the human cost of his fraud. Hundreds of people who might have lived if they received legitimate medical care died because they put their trust in his cure. The common grifter swindles people out of their money. But only a monster would do so at the cost of their last chance of survival.”