To Hot Springs National Park
By Kathie Sutin
Photo: Buckstaff Baths, one of only two historic bathhouses that still operate as bathhouses in Hot Springs National Park, operates as it did in 1900. Photo by Kathie Sutin.
Hot Springs National Park is not what you usually expect in a national park. The park, about 55 miles southwest of Little Rock, doesn’t offer the wide open expanses and majestic vistas we’ve come to expect in national parks. (It should be noted, though, that Hot Springs visitors can take scenic drives into the surrounding mountains.)
Then there’s the park’s size and location. Hot Springs National Park, one of the smallest parks in the system, is more of an urban park surrounded in part by the town of Hot Springs.
Some visitors question why Hot Springs National Park is a national park and not a national monument or historic site (sometimes the same question applies to St. Louis’ Gateway Arch National Park).
But there are two big reasons Hot Springs is worthy of the national park designation.
National parks are designated for their natural beauty and unique geological features usually “because of some outstanding scenic or natural phenomena,” according to NPS.gov, the park service’s website.
That outstanding “natural phenomena” at Hot Springs are the geothermic springs located in and under the park which is in the Diamond Lakes region of the Ouachita Mountains. The park has a total of 47 hot springs, geothermal pools flowing from the southwestern slope of Hot Springs Mountain. The average temperature is 143°F when the water reaches the surface.
The second reason is history. Long before the creation of the United States, Native Americans, who believed the springs had healing properties, visited an area which they called “Valley of the Vapors,” for millennia viewing it as a neutral territory where tribes could meet in peace. It is believed explorer Hernando de Soto, the first European to visit the area, was there in 1541.
While most Americans know that Meriwether Lewis and William Clark gained fame for their exploration of the western and northern reaches of the Louisiana Purchase in 1804-06, it’s safe to say fewer know about the Dunbar Hunter expedition, 1804-1805.
Early visitors
After President Thomas Jefferson commissioned Lewis and Clark’s expedition, he commissioned William Dunbar, a Scottish-born scientist and explorer and George Hunter, another Scotsman and Philadelphia chemist, to explore the lower portion of the Louisiana Territory.
“When William Dunbar and George Hunter explored the nation’s new territories, they found several crude huts near a steaming spring in the Ouachita Mountains,” said Laura Miller,
Superintendent of Hot Springs National Park.
“Their guides explained that people came to the area to soak in the hot water and recover their health.”
Word spread, and soon even more people were flocking to the area in hopes of restoring their health. “Congress declared a four square mile reservation in 1832 to protect the water for public use,” Miller said.
Following the end of the Civil War, veterans and others with disabling conditions traveling to the area found crowded camps near open springs, Miller said.
“They formed temporary communities of people who sought to ease their pain in the thermal waters. Soon, the United States began regulating private bathhouses and took active control over improvements that led to better sanitation and distribution of the water. By the 1900s, Hot Springs was among the most visited health and wellness resorts in the United States.”
Congress established the National Park Service in1916 (the reservation was placed under its control) but it wasn’t until 1921 that Hot Springs was named a national park with the springs and historic bath houses forming the core of the park.
Peak year for park usage came in 1947 when visitors took one million baths.
Popularity declines
But times change, and with modern medical treatments successfully helping those who needed it, visitation to the baths declined.
In 1962, The Fordyce was the first bathhouse on Bathhouse Row to close. In 1989 it reopened as the park visitor center and museum where visitors can see equipment used at the bathhouse, the bath halls and dressing rooms, archival photographs and displays on the geology of the area.
Of the eight buildings on Bathhouse Row, only two — Quapaw Bathhouse and Buckstaff Bathhouse — offer baths and spa services.
Behind the bathhouses and parallel to Bathhouse Row, the Grand Pomenade is a half-mile long trail entirely made of brick offering a great place to walk dotted with benches and tables—even one for playing chess.
Today, Hot Springs National Park “is one of the most visited parks in the country and the most visited park unit in Arkansas,” Miller said. It welcomes around 2.5 million visitors annually, she said.
Visiting Hot Springs National Park is easy on the budget. Admission to the park and the museum is free. Visitors can bring jugs and bottles to take home (without charge) the great-tasting spring water from one of several outdoor fountains listed here.
Visitors can grab a panoramic view of the park and surrounding area at the Hot Springs Mountain Tower, a 216-foot observation tower. A fee is charged.
They can also hike the park’s 26 miles of trails or camp in Gulpha Gorge Campground. The campground has only 40 sites which fill up fast.
For more information on the park, go to its website or to plan a visit to Hot Springs, AR, visit the Hot Springs Convention & Visitors Bureau website.