Hardy has been people’s happy place for more than 140 years.

By 1881, there was a railroad camp full of rowdy young men with money for drinking, gambling, and carousing on the south bank of the Spring River near the ford at Forty Island Creek. This first settlement was known as Hardy’s Camp for James Hardy, the young Batesville constable who was the foreman.

By 1883, the town’s real founder, Walker Clayton, had platted the other side of the river and laid out streets for the new town.  Later that year, Hardy was ready to meet the first train on the completed line from Kansas City to Memphis.

Most of Hardy’s early citizens had ties to the Midwest but the South and the rest of the country were represented as well. To serve travelers, railroad workers, and salesmen, Hardy had a disproportionate number of hotels, boarding houses, saloons, and pool halls. While these thrived, letters in the local paper complained about the struggling state of the town’s one church.

Early in the 20th century, a new kind of visitor arrived from Memphis and cotton country to take advantage of the cool water of the Spring River and the lack of mosquitoes. These visitors to local resorts like the Wahpeton Inn, Rose Hill, and Rio Vista, participated in fox hunts, tea dances, and observed prohibition with a wink and a nod. Boss Crump of Memphis and his family were frequent visitors.

The demise of train travel and the rise of air conditioning were hard on vacation towns like Hardy. A devastating flood in 1982 ironically gave the town a new lease on life when local merchants moved to higher ground and antique and specialty shops began to fill Main Street. Hardy became known as the Antiques Capital of Northeast Arkansas.

Threaded through the decades, Hardy was known as a home for musicians like Grand Ole Opry inductees the Wilburn Brothers and Ashley McBryde. Numerous artists like Memphian Ernie Patton also made Hardy a full or part-time home.