An apocryphal story about Eureka Springs has an old resident of the town visiting with a stranger on a bench in Basin Park during The Great Depression.

  Sitting among the vacant splendor of perfectly preserved stone buildings and gingerbread houses, the stranger says, "Old Timer, this town is sure enough dead." The old man agrees, saying, "Yeah, but ain't she laid out pretty."

  Most 19th-century ghost towns aren't laid out pretty. They are laid out in weeds and ashes with little to mark the spot except for a cemetery and maybe a church stripped bare. There is no joy in such places, only a strange beauty brought about by an uncanny silence.

  Occasionally there are remnants: rubble and ort retaining walls staggering nowhere, a collapsed root cellar, corroded iron pipes, piles of broken bricks and glass held tight by clover and brambles, and often a surprising, simple clutter of flowering irises or jonquils, but never roses, they need care.

  Rarely are larger relics found, because when a town dies, an unnatural process of decay begins. First, houses and buildings that can be moved, are, and then useful parts are taken from the rest, transplanted to new lives for brick, stone and lumber. Over the years strangers pick through the remains until no one wants what's left.

  Why some towns live while others die is human. Towns are built by those who live in them. And like a family, a town has a hierarchy. When that hierarchy fails, so does the town.

  Although no town dies of old age, it is affected by the stream of time. The future -- changing times -- is the usual cause of death. Ignoring an obvious change, like new competition or new technology, is a commonplace accelerant.

  Further complications, like fear and greed, contribute to an obscure inertia so atrophying that ultimately what survives are chronicles, apologists and the town's name.

  Jacksonport, Arkansas is an example. This late 1700s White River trading area was platted and named in 1833.

  As a prospering, year-round trading port, it was made a county seat in 1854, and in 1872 the Cairo & Fulton Railroad approached the town, offering to extend its tracks downtown in exchange for depot land and $25,000.

  Local businessmen refused the offer, saying that no sensible railroad could afford to bypass such an important commercial site as Jacksonport.

  Newport, three miles away, was a fading little town platted in 1837 at the river. It accepted the offer. Today, Jacksonport is a state park, featuring its only remaining building, an 1869 courthouse, which actually underscores the irony. Newport is the county seat.