Miss Laura's Visitor Center

Miss Laura's Visitor Center is one of the most unusual welcome centers in the United States, because the building was once a brothel. The painted Victorian house on North 2nd Street in downtown Fort Smith dates from the 1890s, when the city sat on the edge of Indian Territory and had a reputation as one of the rowdiest towns on the frontier. Laura Ziegler ran the establishment, which was known as Miss Laura's Social Club, and the building later served as apartments before being rescued and restored. Today it is the city's visitor center, and it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. For a traveler based in Van Buren it is the easiest place to start a day in Fort Smith: you can pick up maps, ask about what is open, and learn the story of the neighborhood known as Hell on the Border before you head to the national historic site and the museums. The ground floor and upstairs rooms have been furnished and interpreted to show how the house looked and worked, and the displays explain the social history of the district, the role of the river and the railroads in feeding it, and the way local reformers eventually closed it down. Admission to the visitor center is free, which makes it a good use of a spare forty-five minutes, a rainy hour, or the minutes before a tour begins.

The building itself is worth looking at before you go inside. It is a two-story painted house with decorative woodwork and a porch, built in a style that was fashionable for substantial homes of the period, and it stands near the riverfront streets where the town's early commerce was concentrated. Fort Smith's location made it a magnet: soldiers, steamboat crews, traders, cattle drovers, outlaws and lawmen all passed through, and the businesses that served them ranged from respectable to scandalous.

The exhibits do not sensationalize this history. They present the house as part of a larger story about how a frontier city made its living and how attitudes changed as railroads brought settlers, families and new expectations.

Staff and volunteers at the center are knowledgeable about the whole region, not just the house, so it is a sensible place to ask practical questions. If you have a free afternoon, they can suggest walking routes between the downtown sights, remind you which attractions have seasonal or weekday hours, and point you toward the Belle Grove Historic District, the Clayton House, the riverfront and the trolley museum. Visitors who are building a longer trip around the Arkansas and Missouri Railroad excursions often use Fort Smith as the second half of a weekend, and the visitor center is the right place to turn a loose idea into a plan.

A visit does not take long, which is part of its charm. Most people spend under an hour, enough to read the displays, look through the rooms and browse the brochures. Because it is easy to reach and free to enter, it pairs well with the US Marshals Museum and the Fort Smith National Historic Site, both within a short walk or a very short drive.

The center keeps regular daytime hours, but opening days can change with the season, so check before you go, especially if you are visiting on a Sunday or a holiday. The building is historic, and as with many old houses some areas may be harder to reach for visitors with limited mobility, so ask staff about access when you arrive.