Hot Springs National Park

Hot Springs National Park began as a reservation. Congress set aside the springs and the land around them on April 20, 1832, and the National Park Service counts it as the oldest of the current park units, forty years older than Yellowstone. It became a national park on March 4, 1921. The Encyclopedia of Arkansas says Caddo confederations controlled this country from about A.D. 800, while Quapaw and Choctaw people stayed only for a time, and an 1818 treaty ended the Quapaw claim. The water falls as rain and snow on the Ouachita Mountains, spends roughly 4,400 years underground and returns at about 143 degrees Fahrenheit.

The bathhouses on Central Avenue were rebuilt in brick and stucco between 1912 and 1923, and Bathhouse Row is a National Historic Landmark district. The baths were not open to everyone. After Reconstruction, African Americans worked in the bathhouses but could not freely bathe in them, and the free government bathhouse was remodeled on a segregated plan in 1898. The Pythian Bathhouse, designed by W. T. Bailey of Tuskegee Institute, opened in December 1914 for Black patrons. Desegregation came in 1965, and most bath attendants on the row were African American into the 1980s.

The Fordyce Bathhouse, built in 1914 and 1915, has been the visitor center and museum since 1989, so start there. Entry to the park is free. The park offers spring water at free jug fountains, and a display spring runs behind the Maurice Bathhouse. Two bathhouses on the row sell baths; the park does not.