The interview I was conducting in Bald Knob ended more quickly than I had anticipated that July day. So I called Cave City Mayor Jonas Anderson to tell him I might drive up his way to visit over a cup of coffee. My timing was perfect. Cave City watermelons were just starting to ripen, and Anderson brought me two.

I mentioned in Saturday’s column that Anderson is the current president of the Arkansas Municipal League. The league has been around since 1934, but Anderson is the first president from Sharp County. In a state filled with good mayors, he has become one of my favorites. We met at a coffee shop across from the high school, and he told me that his family’s roots in this area go back decades.

“My grandparents on my mom’s side had a mercantile store until 1974,” Anderson said. “I’ve always wanted to give back. I was elected to the city council in 2010 when I was just 27. For some reason, the late Don Zimmerman [who joined the Municipal League as a field representative in 1966 and was executive director from 1974 until his death in 2018] took me under his wing. In 2018, I was asked to serve on the executive committee. I loved everything about it.”

Anderson’s full-time job is chief technology officer for the Bank of Cave City. He praises the bank’s leaders for allowing him to devote as much time as needed to the mayor’s office.

Since becoming mayor in 2017, Anderson has launched a major effort to bring back downtown Cave City. The city purchased a former bank branch for city offices and also bought the former Cave City Lumber Co. building for the police headquarters. The remains of an old rock building were transformed into a pocket park.

“This sets the stage for us to really bring life back downtown,” he said. “We’ll build a community center at the previous site of city hall and add walking tails. These are the types of things that will attract people to live here.”

Though it’s a small town (1,922 residents in the 2020 census), Anderson believes in doing things in a firstclass manner. For instance, he hired one of the region’s top architectural firms—Polk Stanley Wilcox of Little Rock—to redesign the former bank and lumber company buildings.

Utilizing his experience in the technology sector, Anderson launched a city website after taking office and began working with small businesses to help them succeed. When Cave City Mayor Ron Burge resigned in 2017, city council members voted to have Anderson serve out the rest of the term. Anderson was elected to a fouryear term in 2018 and re-elected in 2022.

Soon after becoming mayor, Anderson told an interviewer: “I hope to cast a vision for what this place can really be—a vision that people can see for themselves and really get excited about as we move ahead in the coming years. … I love meeting people and getting to know their stories because I think that’s what helps keep us grounded and connected to each other.”

The mayor enjoys talking about the rich heritage of a town that was named for the cave that’s beneath it.

“By the 1840s, the cave had become an object of fear because of stories of people entering and never being heard from again,” Mike Cumnock writes for the Central Arkansas Library System’s Encyclopedia of Arkansas. “But a letter appeared in the Sharp County Record in August 1881 promoting the curative effects of Crystal Spring Cave water. What’s now Crystal River Cave was one of the first caverns in Arkansas to be opened for tourists.

“The cave was marketed in the late 19th century as having medical benefits. The cave contains at least five rooms, 75 to 100 feet below the surface. The underground river rises and falls with the Mississippi River, which is almost 150 miles to the east. It contains a species of fish that’s not only sightless but eyeless.”

Cave City wasn’t mentioned in tax records until the early 1890s. In 1891, brothers James and Jack Laman announced the creation of the town. By 1896, there were five general stores, a drugstore, a doctor’s office, two blacksmith shops, a bakery, a hotel and a jeweler. There was a stagecoach that ran daily from Batesville to Evening Shade, stopping in Cave City.

A January 1896 article in the Sharp County Record described Cave City as a summer resort with “the finest cave in northeast Arkansas containing the finest subterranean lake in the state,” The Crystal River Tourist Court was established at the cave’s entrance in 1934. Stone cabins incorporated crystals, petrified wood and Indian relics into their walls.

Cave City is now best known for its watermelon festival, which began in 1980. Anderson became the festival’s volunteer entertainment coordinator in 2015. He describes the festival as a time when “the entire town is filled with a jubilant spirit. They come from as far away as California and Pennsylvania. We’ve even had folks from Europe.”

Cave City may also become known for Anderson’s statewide effort to get younger people involved in local government, along with his attempts to promote civil political discourse.

“I’m not a partisan person at all,” he told me over that cup of coffee. “We must get the political dialogue under control. I’m also all about transparency in government.”

With the Legislature and governor we now must deal with in Arkansas, those were refreshing words to hear. Anderson wants young people statewide to know that serving in elected office can still be an honorable calling.

“There’s a whole other side of this that’s positive and fun,” he said. “We need to find a way to better communicate that fact.”