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    Hot Springs, Arkansas
    Hot Springs, Arkansas
    Hot Springs, Arkansas
    Ebook208 pages2 hours

    Hot Springs, Arkansas

    By Ray Hanley and Steven Hanley

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    About this ebook

    Vintage postcards and photographs depict the history of this Arkansas resort, Hot Springs.


    From its rise in the 1800s until well into the twentieth century, Hot Springs was a famed resort known worldwide. The grand hotels and world-class bath houses that sprang up around the government-protected springs drew countless visitors, ranging from the famous and wealthy to those of humble means, all seeking the health and pleasure promised by the Spa City's promoters. In the words of a railroad tourist guidebook from about 1910, "A stay at Hot Springs, be it ever so brief, always remains a pleasant memory afterward. It was the writer's good fortune to spend a few days at this popular resort--not as an invalid, I am happy to say, but as a tourist--and I certainly never bathed in more delightful water than that which flows so abundantly from the hot springs of Arkansas. There is buoyancy, a magnetism about it that is simply indescribable." Such has been the experience of countless visitors over the years. Readers will find much of the history of this storied resort in Hot Springs, Arkansas, which is profusely illustrated with vintage postcards and photographs, all carefully interpreted by the authors, Ray and Steven Hanley, with research assistance from Mark Blaeuer of the Hot Springs National Park staff.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateJul 28, 2000
    ISBN9781439611241
    Hot Springs, Arkansas
    Author

    Ray Hanley

    The authors, Little Rock brothers Ray and Steven G. Hanley, with the help of many in the community, capture not only the war but also its influence on the state�s culture for the century that followed. Ray Hanley is an executive with a global technology company, and Steven is the director of volunteer services for a major nonprofit organization serving disabled children. Between them, they have produced a daily newspaper column for 20 years and numerous Arkansas history books.

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      Book preview

      Hot Springs, Arkansas - Ray Hanley

      speculation.

      INTRODUCTION

      In 1832, four years before Arkansas statehood, President Andrew Jackson signed a law placing the unique hot springs area under the protection of the federal government. Log hotels and bath houses had already sprung up around the springs, and there was concern about protecting their wonders for future generations. This was the first time in American history that land was set aside for specific recreational purposes, even more amazing in that it would be some 40 years more before the country’s first national park was created at Yellowstone National Park covering areas of Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana.

      The area’s remote location, in an era of rough roads and unreliable transportation, kept the Hot Springs population sparse for many years. Only 84 residents were counted in the 1851 census, when the City of Hot Springs was incorporated. After the Civil War, new residents began to flood into the area, some laying claim to the springs themselves. It took a declaration by the United States Supreme Court in 1876 to firmly establish the right of the federal government to regulate development on the more than one thousand acres surrounding the springs. It was this Federal Reservation status that would be changed in 1921 for Hot Springs to become an official National Park.

      By 1900, Hot Springs was one of the grandest resorts in the world, drawing visitors from around the globe. Visitors especially came from northern U.S. cities like Chicago, in order to escape harsh winters and to partake of the fabled healing of the hot spring waters. For almost two decades after this time Hot Springs was a Victorian wonder to behold, and one of the most popular tourist resorts in the nation. The Hot Springs tour guides published by the competing railroads offer some of the best written records of how the healing properties of the waters and the gaiety of the city’s social scene were promoted to potential visitors and rail passengers.

      A 1910 booklet printed by the Illinois Central Railroad poetically claimed, When Mother Earth discovered that her Great Maker had populated this world with human beings, she knew that youth was precious. In a mammoth storehouse, she established a treasury of remedies of her own making for human ills, senility and weariness. This she dedicated to the world and its people. It is known as Hot Springs, and lies in the land of the Ozarks, in Arkansas. The booklet went on to point out, To look about in the ancient Grecian and Roman cities and see the ruins of the once magnificent bath houses, is to wish that one had been entitled to the privileges of those times. And yet, right in our front yard we have the same advantages. For the baths at Hot Springs have one other function that is of no less importance than that of curing the sick. They establish good health!

      To bathe in the warm waters of Hot Springs is to feel the hand of nature in one of her sublimest moods upon your body, gentle, caressing, curative and resting, all without exertion or pain. No heroics greet the sufferer at the baths of this famous garden of health. Do as you please, bathe or drink, exercise, work or play—no one objects. It is an Eden for the sick—a Heaven for the tired and the weary. It is a necessity for the rich man, a possibility and a probability for the poor man.

      The United States Railroad Administration published a booklet around 1915 with glowing recommendations for the baths of Hot Springs: The spirit of Hot Springs creeps into the veins of the newcomer unawares. The average visitor enters the valley fagged out mentally and physically. He is the victim of too much applied energy in one direction, and a sense of relief, of freedom from care, steals over him as he establishes himself in his commodious quarters and prepares for a good rest. When he enters upon his course of baths, his business or domestic problems, though pigeonholed somewhere in the back of his head, have not been entirely forgotten. For the first few days he lies upon his cooling-room couch, his body relaxed, his eyes closed, his ears deaf to the voices of those around him. Then, suddenly, he awakes. A new and unusual feeling of animation possesses him. His blood is beginning to tingle. His old time energy is coming back to him and his thoughts are turning to golf, to tennis, to horse-back riding other amusements. Then it is that he begins to appreciate what is happening to him, to understand that the baths have driven all sluggishness from his blood, have give him the energy not only to work but to play and have created in him the desire to play. And he plunges joyfully into the whirlpool of Hot Springs activity.

      The Missouri Pacific Railroad in its 1909 promotional booklet went even further in making bold health claims about the waters: To undertake to give a complete list of cures that have been effected would be like trying to name all the ills that escaped from Pandora’s box. It would be impossible, but official reports declare the waters have cured well nigh every disease to which the flesh is heir. The booklet cited the reports of the Surgeon General of the U.S. Army to say the waters cured diseases ranging from rheumatism, malaria, and liver disease, to chronic diarrhea and lung troubles. The same booklet reported that the bath houses had a combined total of 600 tubs, capable of administering 8,000 baths a day. The railroad advised that a stay in Hot Springs was affordable, ranging from $46 to $145 per month, which included lodging, meals, and bathing expenses. The Missouri Pacific publication also stated, "It is a well known fact that these waters are the only hot waters in America which can be drunk freely without causing nausea. A folding cup is part of the equipment of every tourist, and as one wanders along the beautiful walks and thoroughfares of Hot Springs, one cannot resist the temptation to stop at every fountain and quaff the pure Adam’s ale as it flows piping hot from the secret urns of good old Mother

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