Rainbow Bridge Lodge in Historic Downtown Cotter, Arkansas 2nd Street & McLean Avenue   E-mail For immediate reservation information, call 870-404-7757

History of the Rainbow Bridge Lodge

When Lake's Ferry was chosen in 1902 by the Iron Mountain Railroad as the site of the new town of Cotter to be built on the White River, people flooded into the area.

Among the first to arrive were Bettie and Bob Miser, of Izard County, who ran a hotel in a tent. Church services and school classes were also housed in tents until the lumber for buildings could be brought up the river by steamboat. By the end of Cotter's first year, the Miser's had built a real hotel.

The Miser Hotel is now open to the public. This does not imply that Mr. And Mrs. Miser have not been keeping hotel, but they have passed up from their tents to that elegant 22-room house and are now dispensing their hospitality therein. - The Cotter Courier, Jan. 1, 1904

The young people of the town held a dance at the Cannady building last night, and in connection therewith an oyster supper at the Miser hotel . . . Supper was served at 10 o'clock and the dancing was then continued until 1:30 a.m. Those present report an enjoyable time. -- The Cotter Courier, Jan. 1, 1904.

Large parties of fishermen began take advantage of the  relatively easy trip to the White River from the nearby cities of Kansas City, Chicago and St. Louis on the new White River Railway.

. . . Bass of three kinds, rainbow trout, jack salmon, buffalo, red-horse, suckers and enormous catfish. Not the flabby fish that congregate at the mouth of city sewers, but large, firm-fleshed, fighting fellows that give the fishermen all they want to do to handle them on rod and line. -- The Cotter Courier, Jan. 1, 1904. Reprinted from the St. Louis Globe-Democrat

In February of 1904 the local paper reported that the population was between five and six hundred. There were six general stores, two drug stores, two groceries, one furniture store, two meat markets, one jewelry store, one bank, one blacksmith shop, three restaurants, two real estate offices, two pool halls, three doctor's offices, one central telephone office, three barber shops, one livery barn, two wagon yards, six hotels and boarding houses, two photograph galleries, one laundry, one shoe shop, one paint shop and one carpenter shop.

Visitors came from all over the world to watch the bridge and tunnel construction, complete with master drillers from Macedonia, Italy and Austria. An extra attraction was a big steam shovel cutting away the mountain north of the depot, the approach to the bridge, and loading gravel for track ballasting.

As 1904 slipped into 1905, the people of Cotter began a somewhat less hectic time. Births, marriages and deaths are reported. The "old" buildings began to be remodeled, and new ones were built on the remaining lots. Lodges were formed -- Masons, Knights of Pythias, Owls, and others. Ice cream parlors and millinery shops joined the pool halls and livery stables.

At noon on Tuesday, September 5, 1905, the unthinkable happened -- a fire in the kitchen of the Bob and Bettie Miser's hotel got out of hand and much of the McLean Street business district was destroyed. The fire was stopped on the south side of the street by "the big iron building of Morgan Jolly," now the site of Cotter Hobby. The north side of McLean, however, was not so lucky, and a full block of buildings was destroyed.

The Misers lost the building, worth about $2500, but the furniture was saved. Along with most of the rest of the business people in town, they determined to rebuild -- and this time with brick, stone, concrete and concrete blocks.

The Cotter Courier of April 27, 1906, says that the new hotel was opened on Monday but had not yet been named. Soon, however, Bettie Miser chose the "Bank Hotel" as the name for her new establishment. 

Rainbow Bridge Lodge
in Historic Downtown Cotter
2nd and McLean
Cotter, Arkansas
870-404-7757

Proud Member of the
Cotter Area Chamber of Commerce