Meandering In My RV: Hot Springs National Park

Friday, June 8, 2018

Hot Springs National Park

Part of Bathhouse Row
Hot Springs NP

From our RV base in Little Rock we drove about an hour to Hot Springs National Park. This is the nations smallest National Park at only 5,550 acres and is also unique because it is intertwined with the city of Hot Springs. The city has made an industry out of tapping and dispensing the park's mineral-rich waters from hot springs that flow from the slopes of Hot Springs Mountain.

More Bathhouse Row

The heart of this park is Bathhouse Row which is the main street of the city of Hot Springs. When Hot Springs prospered as a health spa in the mid-19th century, promoters piped and diverted the water into bathhouses. Over time, the bathhouses grew in number, size and extravagance as they competed for business from people seeking the healing powers of the water. By the 1960's the healing powers were refuted by medicine, people stopped coming and the bathhouses began to shut down. In the 1980's the National Park Service began purchasing the buildings, fixing them up and repurposing them by leasing them out for businesses. Today they stand as a row of beautiful buildings with various purposes including a couple of them still as bathhouses.

More Bathhouse Row

The park visitor center is in the former Fordyce Bathhouse which operated from 1915 to 1962. It was extensively restored by 1989 and is a really fun building to tour. The park also preserves the "recharge zone" of the springs, the slopes where rain and snow soak into the ground, and the "discharge zone" which contains 47 springs. Each day, the park collects about 700,000 gallons of water for use in the public drinking fountains and bathhouses.

Visitor Center
Formerly Fordyce Bathhouse

There is a drive to an observation tower on Hot Springs Mountain where you can view the countryside. We did not do this so I have no firsthand information on the drive or view.