‘Cora Pinkley Call’ Log Cabin

Cora’s Cabin is a hands-on exhibit located in the historical log cabin adjacent to the Eureka Springs Historical Museum on South Main Street.

Self-guided tour and hands-on exhibit of Cora's Cabin, located next to the Eureka Springs Historical Museum on South Main Street.

Cora Elizabeth Pinkley Call was a popular Ozark writer, naturalist, herbalist, folklorist, and Eureka Springs (Carroll County) historian and advocate. Call was founder of the Ozark Writers-Artists Guild (OWAG) and active into the 1960s with the annual meetings in Eureka Springs. She co-founded Ozark Gardens, a nationally distributed newspaper containing gardening information and nature stories. A writer of both fiction and nonfiction and a reporter and columnist for newspapers and syndicates, Call wrote poetry, short stories for children and adults, and magazine and newspaper articles. Most of her books were self-published and self-marketed. She was known as an authority on the flora and fauna of the Ozarks, subjects she drew upon in her later writings.

Her first book, Pioneer Tales of Eureka Springs and Carroll County (1930), recounted tales from Call’s ancestors plus profiles of Eureka Springs’ founding fathers, descriptions of early businesses, and Call’s “preachment” against the evils of divorce and the modern “pursuit of pleasure.” Both Shifting Sands (1943) and The Dream Garden (1944) began as serialized children’s fiction and were later published as books. Shifting Sands, likely based on travels Cora and Miles made to the West seeking relief for Miles’s tuberculosis, told the story of a brother and sister traveling to western climes in order to help the brother regain his health. In The Dream Garden, city-bred twin sisters find fulfillment in their new Ozark home. Within My Ozark Valley (1956) described Call’s pioneer ancestors’ experiences homesteading the Kings River valley.

Call’s writing had a folksy style. Her non-fiction book Eureka Springs, Stair-Step-Town (1952) included a history of Eureka Springs, plus chapters on folkways, nature, religion, patriotism, and her anger over outsiders’ depictions and stereotypes of Ozark hill people. For God and Country (1962) was an anti-communist tract written to “give God his rightful place in the U.S.” Ozark recipes were featured in From My Ozark Cupboard (1950), which covered standard fare as well as instructions for killing hogs; making head cheese and squirrel stew; and cooking raccoons, groundhogs, and opossums. Call’s other books included the nonfiction True Stories of Birds and Animals (1960) and Trailblazers of the Ozarks (1974), a fictionalized tale based on her ancestors’ experiences.

Cora Pinkley Call (1892–1966)

Cora Pinkley Call died on June 7, 1966, and is buried in the Independent Order of Odd Fellows cemetery in Eureka Springs.

During her writing career, her husband had built a cabin on their property near the Kings River, Eureka Springs where she practiced her craft. The cabin now stands on the grounds of the Eureka Springs Historical Museum.

Tags: hands-on exhibit, log cabin