May 14

We took a two hour scenic drive down to Hot Springs. A friend of ours, Debbie, grew up in Georgia and spent time in the summers with cousins just a few miles from Petit Jean. We took a little side trip to get some photos for her. The little town has many of the buildings that would have been there back then. It is still a small town. Fun to picture her running across the fields with her cousins.

Hot Springs was quite a place in its day but during the 1950’s changes in medicine led to a rapid decline in the use of water therapies. People began taking driving vacations rather than going to a single destination and business declined. When Chris and Norm came through here in the early 90’s it was looking a pretty bedraggled. The town seems to be on the up swing with two of the bath houses open and many of the stores fronts across the street have been restored and are full of merchandise. Hot Springs and Central Ave have quite a history.

Bathhouse Row on the Magnolia Lined Street

Of course the hot springs were used by the local Indians for hundreds of years before frontiersmen came in and began putting up wooden buildings, even tents, to offer hot baths in the early 1800’s. It began catching on. The train line came through town and people were flocking here to soak in the waters. The federal government actually set aside land here in 1832 as the first US reservation. Bathhouse Row was on its way. The row of bathhouses we see today are turn of the century. Magnolias were planted all along the street and are just ending there blooming season. Across the street from the bathhouses are stores, restaurants and hotels just as it was a hundred years ago. Some of the big hotels are pretty much in ruin up the street. Today there is a gambling museum and a gangster museum there also! I guess gambling was big and gangsters were here to get their soaks too. The National Park headquarters is in the beautiful Fordyce Bathhouse.

Fordyce Bathhouse

Twenty-seven rooms were restored in the 80’s and today they offer a tour so we can see what it must have been like to come for water treatments 100 years ago. Besides the bath facilities, there are various beautiful salons, a rooftop garden, beauty shop, and a gym that had the latest in workout machines that used resistance way back then. Of course the men were on one side and the women on the other. They were trying all kinds of treatments from soaks to messages, steam treatments, and hot packs. The water was held at 140 degrees. And they were put in vapor cabinet, like a sauna, for 30 minutes. Now the time limit is two minutes!

I'm ready for a soak - I wish!

The Vapor Cabinet is in the rear on the left.
Your head sticks out the hole.

One of the Many Beautiful Salons

In the basement we saw the water coming to the surface at 143 degrees. I takes about 4,000 years for this water to filter down 8,000 feet and then come to the surface. Buckstaff bathhouse is the only bathhouse that has been continually open through the years. They still offer the traditional treatments. For only $30.00 you can get a tub bath, hot packs, sitz bath, vapor cabinet, needle shower and whirlpool! Not bad. You can add in a massage for another $35.00.

Buckstaff Bathhouse where you can still get the traditional treatments.

Quapaw Baths and Spa is more the modern spa. I would have loved taking in a little of the pampering! I think Buckstaff would have been my choice.

We are enjoying a "moonshone margarita."