Carrie Nation
Alone or accompanied by hymn-singing women, Carrie Nation would march into a bar and sing and pray, while smashing bar fixtures and liquor stock with a hatchet.
Of her first Bar-Smashing, she recalled, “I went out in the yard and picked up some brick-bats . . . and I wrapped them up in newspapers to pack in the box under my buggy seat. I hitched my horse to the buggy, put the box of "smashers" in, and at half past three o'clock in the afternoon, the sixth of June, 1900, I started to Kiowa.”
She later described herself as "a bulldog running along at the feet of Jesus, barking at what he doesn't like," and claimed a divine ordination to promote temperance by smashing up bars.
Of her retirement haven, Eureka Springs, she remarked, "The water is the purest, the scenery is not surpassed, and the mountain air is life-giving . . . I believe the mountains of the Ozarks to be the future health resorts of this country."
Mother Nation had a dream that she would find a spring in the rock across the street from her home. As Moses brought forth water from a rock by striking it with a staff, so Carrie struck her boulders by having her handy man blow it up with a stick of dynamite --- now, the Carry A Nation Spring.
Next to her home on Steel Street, she constructed a school and upon her death, left her residence as a home for Battered Women.
The Carry Nation Hatchet Hall survives after having been a museum for a number of years.
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Dan Ellis has written a booklet on Carrie Nation which is available for Door Prize or Auction by any worthy organization.
She was known to have visions and upon coming to Eureka Springs, she followed up on her dream by blasting the rocks in front of her home and there was her vision -- her own Eurekan spring poured forth.