Miss Laura's Social Club....

....AKA bordello. 
 We left Texarkana about 7 this morning and reached Fort Smith about 4  hours later. The drive between the 2 cities was absolutely breathtaking----when the highway was put in the engineers built it along one of the old stagecoach routes through the Boston Mountains, & the highway was full of really high hills, lots of twists  and turns and lots of small towns to go through. Fort Smith, in the late 1880's, was a wild border town, with the Indian Territories located to the West across the Arkansas River. Because it was a wild cowboy town, there were 4 or 5 bordellos which opened and formed the "Red Light District". This building that is now the Visitor's Center once housed Miss Laura's Social Club & has been restored to much of it's original look--all of the woodwork is original---and the wallpaper was recreated from pieces of the original paper found under layers of paint. We also toured the buildings from the actual fort that gave the town it's name, which housed the jail, the barracks for the soldiers and the courtroom of "hanging" Judge Parker. The grounds have a recreation of the gallows, a couple of covered wagons and the original commissary. A great place to visit and spend time ambling along! Another hours drive and we reached Courtney and Matt's house, just as Court was leaving to pick the girls up from school, so I rode along.......the rest of the day was spent playing....Barbies, board games, drawing, frisbee, blowing bubbles, etc.......I'm whipped & am going to bed! :))