Hot Springs National Park was designated as a National park in 1921. It’s 5,500 acres of forested mountains surround the downtown area of the city of Hot Springs, Arkansas - creating a true urban park.
In the early 1800’s explorers in the Ouachita Mountains were told of the hot waters that people would soak in to “recover their health” and in 1832 Congress declared a four square mile reservation to protect the water for public use. By the late 1860’s the area began to draw many people lured by the promise of improved health and at the turn of the century Hot Springs was among the most visited health resorts in the U.S. boasting many fine hotels and opulent bathhouses. Today there are 9 remaining bathhouse buildings - most repurposed.
We visited the Fordyce Bathhouse which is now the park’s visitor center. Built in 1915 this elegant building houses, as a museum, separate men’s and women’s baths, dressing rooms, massage rooms, a gymnasium and social areas set up to recreate what it looked like in its heyday. The men’s bathing area features a large domed stained glass ceiling with a sculpture of Hernando DeSoto and an “Indian” maiden as the room’s centerpiece. Questionable at best…. Needless to say, the women’s bathing area was quite utilitarian.
We were scheduled to have hot spring baths and massages at the Buckstaff Baths, the only bathhouse on the row to operate continuously for over a century, but our reservations were canceled at the last minute due to Covid.
We did, however, find a bathhouse that offered us something that made us both quite happy. Superior Bathouse Brewery! Yes! The only brewery located within a national park, it occupies one of the remaining bathhouses, and it uses the park’s thermal spring water as their main ingredient. Okay…. So instead of sitting in the thermal water we drank it and instead of getting a massage we drank it!
All good.
As one enters the park on foot, running behind the row of bathhouses, there is the Grand Promenade. Wide, bricked and surrounded by plantings this walkway was the outdoor accompaniment to the indoor “health restorative”. The promenade is .5 miles one way and is the entry point for many of the trails that run up into the park. There is also a one way loop drive inside the park to the top of Hot Springs Mountain. Along the drive there are occasional pull outs for additional access to the many trails within.
The loop road was steep and winding (similar to most of the roads we have encountered here in Arkansas!) Near the top there is a tower that will carry you up 216 feet to an observation deck for views of Hot Springs Mountain and the vast Ouachita Mountains. It’s an approximate 1.5 mile trail hike to the tower from the park entrance. It was difficult to get any good pictures inside the park because the trails are all quite narrow and tree lined.
The most amazing thing about this park is the geology. Unlike many hot springs - like Iceland, which are volcanic in nature - the springs here are created by a complex system of of faults and fractures in the rocks. Rain and snow trickle into cracks of brittle rock ( novaculite and chert). Gravity pulls the water downward into the earths’s crust and the water’s temperature increases with the depth. When the water eventually reaches a major fault on Hot Springs Mountain, pressure propels it back upward. Through carbon dating experts have determined that it takes almost 4,500 YEARS for the water to complete this journey! It emerges from the springs at @ 143 degrees F.
Wow!
Most of the hot springs within the park have been capped/covered since the turn of the century in order to protect them from contamination, however, there are 4 on display along Bathhouse Row where you can touch the water. There’s are also 3 additional thermal spring fountains and 2 cold spring fountains where you can fill up bottles.
While visiting Hot Springs we stayed for 3 days at Lake Ouachita State Park. Approximately 30 minutes away it was nestled in the mountains….. so quiet and peaceful - we saw only 3 other campers the entire time. There was ZERO connectivity in the park but it was actually quite welcome for us right now…. Lots of conversation over what we had seen in the past week.
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