The Cardiff Giant, a reputed petrified man found in New York in eighteen sixty nine, spawned a smaller version in Arkansas about ten years later.
In 1880, Henry Johnson of Pope County hired Fayetteville tombstone carver Marcus Lafayette Kelly to create a twenty-six-inch statue of a child. It was then covered in clay and ash, giving it a blue-gray color. At the same time, Texan J.B. Hallum bought land in Eureka Springs, then hired Thomas Campbell to dig a well. Sure enough, Campbell found the eighty-five-pound baby about four feet down. Johnson, Hallum and Campbell charged Eureka Springs residents and visiting invalids a dime a pop to see the “Petrified Indian Baby,” then hiked the rate to thirty-five cents.
After exhausting local interest, it toured other Arkansas cities as well as St. Louis, New Orleans and Galveston. It was in 1948, when all of the conspirators had died, that the Eureka Springs Baby was proved a hoax, as was its giant cousin.
Learn more about the Eureka Springs Baby at the Encyclopedia of Arkansas.
