Sunken Dreams: William "Coin" Harvey & Monte Ne, Arkansas

Her first life on the ruins of Montenegro. This place and the valley that surrounds it is on a tributary of the Mighty White River. This once grand tourist destination Drew folks from across America here to relax and enjoy the natural beauty. Me to the Ozarks. Today most of what was Monta name is under water submerged after the creation of a beaver dam in 1962. This resort was the dream of William Coyne Harvey educator

lawyer and promoter office and champion of the free silver movement. This film is about his life and his dreams. That was wanted. A smile begets a smile and kindness begets kindness. Coin Harvey born in the rugged wilderness of 19th century West Virginia William hope Harvey spent his formative years in Buffalo and grew up the son of a prosperous planter. He entered Marshall College in nearby Huntington but remained there only a few months. He then began to study law on his own while supporting himself by teaching school. RB was admitted to the West Virginia Bar before his 21st birthday and

practiced law in Huntington West Virginia and then for two years in Cleveland Ohio. RB met and married his wife and our holiday of Cleveland in 1879 they moved to Chicago and two years later to gallop police Ohio. Over the next years they move from ply supply I see practicing gala police for a little while then they went to Chicago then they came back to Gallup Elise and then in the mid 1880s everything really took a dramatic change. He took his family out West to southwest Colorado and got involved in running a silver mine left behind. But they didn't stay there very long. That wasn't going as well as he hoped it would go so again he goes in search of something else. And he takes his family to Pueblo Colorado and he got involved there in all

sorts of activities involving law and real estate promotion and also got involved in the building of the mineral palace there. It was an elaborate exposition hall that was to celebrate the importance of mining and Colorado's economy at the time. It featured statues of the Silver Queen and King color. Harvey's Odyssey continued across the West as he sought fame and fortune after the mineral palace fell on hard times. He pulled up stakes and moved to Ogden Utah where he was a central figure in the order of Monte Christo whose main purpose was the creation and promotion of a Mardi Gras type festival that unfortunately like the mineral palace failed to make any money for Harvey and his family by 1893.

Harvey moved back to Chicago. It was this same year that the nation was gripped by a severe depression. Early in 1893 one of the major railroads and manufacturing companies in the country went bankrupt. This touched off a wave of bank closures. Over 600 banks failed in the country over the next year by 1893. One in four unskilled workers were out of work on a farm for closures were at an all time high. This was the worst depression the worst event like this in the history of this country up until the great depression that started in 1929 ID 33. So it it has a huge impact across the country in many sectors of the economy. And in that situation many feel that their government is unresponsive. People who are clamoring for some relief and clamoring for an increase in the money supply find that their president could go over Cleveland and a Republican

Congress actually do you monetize. So over that is they say we're going strictly on a gold standard. And so in early 1894 there is just a wave of interest in free silver and so calling Harvey comes along with his little book. Point financials at just the right target maybe and politicians are the people in every street corner are reading this book. They just it's a book and the man in the market hitting all the other one of the writer Harvey's best seller launched him into the national spotlight as the king of free silver coins financial school was based on a fictional character named coin and his Dialogues with the major proponents of the gold standard at the time. Through the book the youthful coin confronts and debugs the arguments for the continuation of the gold standard and offers up a solution to the problems that beset people in the 1890s by advocating the free coinage of silver. This character and the success Harvey received

after publishing over 1 million copies earned him the nickname coin. A knowledge of the money subject is what is now most needed in the present disturbance in the civilization cannot function without money. Coin Harvey the government had existed on a bimetallic system of currency since the time of the founding of the republic. Money was coined in both gold and silver at a ratio of weight between the silver and the gold dollar at sixteen to one. The silver in the Silver Dollar weighed sixteen times as much as the gold in the gold dollar in 1873. The government decided to end the coining of silver and go strictly on the gold standard. This system eventually evolved into the Federal Reserve system we have today. Harvey and his contemporaries sought the reintroduction of the coining of silver at a

ratio of sixteen to one. This was the basis of the free silver movement. During the presidential campaign of 1896 Harvey became the chairman of the Democratic Party's Ways and Means Committee and was influential in making frequent each of sylver one of the major issues in the election. Cohen was influential in shaping the campaign of Democratic candidate William Jennings Bryan in terms of the election of 1896 which is sometimes called the Battle of the standers the gold standard versus the xover standard court Harvey is very very important as a popularizer. Again again the general public is not interested in technical economics they want some of they can usually understand by virtue of this massive printing operation he waged many many people who might not have been interested in politics at all. Harvey's hopes for change in American society and specifically his hopes for the frequent age of silver collapsed with the defeat of William Jennings Bryan and the

Democrats in the general election of 1896. Faced with this defeat Harvey became convinced that American society was headed for collapse and that wise men would do well to hide out in the wilderness. Which is exactly what he did when he purchased some three hundred twenty acres near Rogers Arkansas well a 900 point RV moved here in northwest Arkansas. Well the funny thing is he said he like Arkansas because there were no large cities and no rich people. It's changed a lot since then. He came down to the valley of what was known as sober springs here just southeast of Rogers. It was a luxury a great tree very cool a great place to have a resort which is what he planned to build here. He bought three hundred twenty acres in this area and a very beautiful place and

wanted a water. It was a site of many springs that made the water very cool and the area very refreshing. Harvey envisioned the area as a resort Mecca. He put his talents for promotion and public relations to work by surveying the land offering up lots for sale and laying out contracts to build the first of what he envisioned. Several hotels that would occupy the valley to build a resort the very first thing he built was a hotel called Hotel want today. They had 300 foot wings in the hotel lots of porches and the rooms all had their own fireplaces because even here in the middle of summer in the evening it would get fairly cool so they could have a little bit of fire a bit of warmth in the rooms with the completion of the hotel. On June 19th 1001 the small town of Montenegro sprang up around it. Harvey opened up a bank helped

start the newspaper and dedicated his time to promoting and building his resort. After the initial success of Hotel Montana Harvey continued to make his dream into a reality. He was instrumental in organizing the road building from Lowell out to Montenegro. He damned big spring and in so doing he created a lagoon that visitors would encounter whenever they disembark the train. Harvey then had visitors cross the lagoon in boats or an authentic the Nishan gondola that Harvey had imported for guests to cross the lagoon into the waiting hotel. MARTIN A became known as the only place in the country where you could go from train to gondola. He does very well.

So by the time we got 19 0 5 he brings in fairly well we know and architect from St. Louis by the name of a old Clark. He is responsible for building two of the hotels. They were called rows and they were named after the surrounding states. Going out originally meant to call them by the four states Texas Louisiana Oklahoma and Missouri and then put an Arkansas center as well. He only had to built Oklahoma and Missouri. Missouri row was the second hotel constructed beginning in August of 1904. The building was forty six feet wide and three hundred five feet long and built of 8000 logs with a cement floor and a red tiled roof. Fourteen thousand cubic feet of concrete were used. The tiles alone were shipped from Chicago and five railroad cars in the center and two ends of the hotel rose to two stories. The remainder being a single story as was the

case with Hotel Montana a Missouri row featured long porches. Five hundred seventy five feet of them. The hotel opened in September of 1995. The final hotel built was Oklahoma row and it featured a two story main lobby with a multi story tower at the south end of the hotel. This was one of the first multi storey concrete buildings constructed in the United States. Both row hotels featured electric lights indoor plumbing with running water and each room had its own fireplace in their day. The Missouri and Oklahoma row hotels were the largest log structures in the world. In

August 1990 Harby son Hal and brother in law Ernest Halliday opened a large Bathhouse on Silver Springs Creek across the lagoon from hotel Montenegro. The indoor pool was the first in Arkansas. It was 25 by 50 feet and seven feet deep and included spring boards and slides. The pool was fed by the Big Spring. But that down there and the water it would turn you in just a few minutes. But there are a lot. The resort grew and became quite successful. Most notable at this time was

the 4th of July celebrations which involved brass bands baseball games and fireworks. Crowds of 5000 people or more were often in attendance on these special occasions. And if we think of him as one of these people who's a visionary he's sort of out there thinking grand thoughts and scheming about what will change society and oh by the way make me some money. I look at Martin as something Bo. This would be a marvelous attraction where ordinary people could come in and enjoy the outdoors and enjoy popular culture like they were going to a Chautauqua meetings and voice. And also with the curious his personal fortune so doing well and doing good seem to join for many of these people. He was not a religious person. In fact he was at odds with his wife over the Adnan his wife being being fairly religious so he doesn't bring the traditional religious values in but the same

time. I certainly think he was a laurel person and we see that especially in the 9000 teens and 20s when he's in special mention teens when he's dealing with what he call character building and the whole list of of character traits he thought would make a better. A better populace in the United States. And although they're religious in nature they are kind of golden rule in nature. I think he he he had values and he felt very strongly about them. And for him to get them across sometimes he seemed very strict and severe and and even conservative people. But he did not to force his wife to 1929 shortly before he died. Perhaps because in all of his writings and argued about the evils of divorce and maybe he just wanted them to live apart openly and explain to the children why they were doing that but I guess he didn't want to take that final step but at the end he did and he married

his longtime secretary Mary Leakey. Hard to believe that his ideas could save American civilization from perdition. He conceived of plans to build a pyramid to inform distant generations about the fate of America and to serve as a repository for records of the twentieth century. Vance Randolph author and important chronicler of the history of the Ozarks wrote this about Harvey's pyramid. There were to be four separate vaults in the pyramid each vault was to contain one copy of a special 400 page book written by Coyne Harvey himself. It was a report on the rise and growth of the present civilization with the symposium of opinions regarding the dangers which threatened it and the cause of its impending collapse. On top of the pyramid were to be fixed plates of the most enduring metal known bearing the inscription.

When this can be read go below and find the record of a former civilization. Vance Randolph New York. Where are you going Harvey was convinced of our own civilizations are coming and gone what to do with Toad saw of her ring and this one isn't doing. And it's all cool by 1928. The foundation for the pyramid was complete. Harvey had plans to prevent erosion on the east side so he had a foyer or what was later called the ampitheater built for this purpose. This

ampitheater was designed to seat 1000 people and was fashioned out of steel reinforced concrete. By nineteen twenty nine with the beginning of the Great Depression work on the pyramid today the only remnant of Harvey's work on the pyramid project is the submerged that occasionally re-emerges from Beaver Lake. He put ten thousand dollars of his own money into the Ampitheater. He got about one thousand dollars in donations from the people to build empathy or he ran out of money to build the pyramid. It never got built. Interestingly today you'll hear people say let's go to the pyramid or to the pyramids. What they're referring to here is the ampitheater of. At

the age of 81 William Klein Harvey ran for president of the United States. Making him the oldest person ever to run for the office he founded Liberty Party which was devoted to the abolition of interest and the free coinage of silver the lifetime obsession of Harvey. The whole affair came to naught as the party polled less than 60000 votes in the election at 930 to get to kind of what is typically a retirement age and you start thinking what what's my legacy. You know what am I leaving behind. And for him you know he can look back and say well back in the 90s this but you know the resort's great but you know it's really what what really I think enthused him was you know the issues of of the economy and this character building type thing. And he you know fuse them he melded them together to some of his things and and the whole both both the pyramid and his getting back into politics. You know I think you know whether he

thought of it in those concrete terms or not it was kind of this is my legacy I need to do something else. An evil giant. Its name usury interest is stalking through all the nations of the world trampling underfoot the liberties and the happiness of the people according to Harvey. On February 11th 1936 coin Harvey died at his home in Montenegro Arkansas. He was 84 years old and although he is gone he leaves his legacy through his writings and the ruins of Montigny Coyne was interred in a cement tomb with his son house. You're hardly even born back before the Civil War and and some of the people who were involved in the popular movements. He didn't just kind of moderate segue and become a progressive and then become a

Democratic new deal or he really stayed out there on the fringes with some of his ideas including never ever even giving up on the idea of free silver. I do take offense to folks who call me eccentric or nuts. I know he was not. I don't have any hesitation in saying that I do believe he was an entrepreneur. He just really jumped and moved and you know gotten himself in all these different things. It's just fascinating that when there's so many things that we don't know about him it strikes me that he could have been a model for the wizard in The Wizard of Oz is this person calling the charlatan charlatan calling the new original thinker but he's someone who can captivate see the imagination of people and lives by his wits until things come question him for having things always to be crashing down it was one after another and none of them exactly were. But yet here I

think you left him or through his writings. He knew where the food leading our society based on me like this only him becoming He would help me to see the world agreed saying no to any new thing.