The springs that became the heart of Eureka Springs were long known by Native Americans as healing waters, and the earliest visitors to this wilderness place came seeking better health, believing the water could cure many illnesses. In 1879, health-seekers, mostly poor people who had exhausted other remedies, arrived on foot, horseback, and in wagons, living in covered wagons, tents, and rough shacks while spending their days walking sociably from spring to spring with tin cups and water bottles. By the 1890s, Eureka Springs was becoming a fine spa resort, with fine hotels on either side of Basin Park, including the Southern Hotel on the south and the Perry House on the north; after the Perry House burned, it was replaced by the Basin Park Hotel in 1905, the last of the big hotels. Since the 1880s, the Flatiron Building on Spring Street has been a local landmark, though the present one is the fourth on that spot after earlier wooden structures were destroyed in a series of great fires.