Water has attracted people to Hot Springs, Arkansas since before the 1700s. Some believe that the traces of minerals and an average temperature of 143 degrees Fahrenheit/62 degrees Centigrade give the waters whatever therapeutic properties they may have.

In 1803, the U.S. acquired the area around Hot Springs in Arkansas as part of the purchase of the Louisiana Territory from France. The first bathhouses were crude canvas and wood structures, little more than tents perched over individual springs or reservoirs carved out of the rock. By 1877, the government approved blueprints for private bathhouses ranging from simple to luxurious.

By 1921 the Hot Springs Reservation had become popular with vacationers and health remedy seekers.  By the 1960s traditional bathing was in decline and the bathhouses began to close their doors. Unused, the buildings fell into disrepair. Thankfully, in 2004 the park service received the first of several allocation of funds to restore the bathhouses to what they are today – a magnificent nod to the golden age of bathing!

At its peak of popularity, over a million visitors a year immersed themselves in the park’s hot waters which are believed to be 4,000 years old!

 

Hot Springs National Park is not in a volcanic region. Outcroppings of regional rock absorb rainfall and pores and fractures in the rock conduct the water deep into the earth. As the water percolates downward, increasingly warmer rock heats it at a rate of about four degrees Fahrenheit every 300 feet. In the process the water dissolves minerals out of the rock. Eventually the water meets faults and joints leading up to the lower west slope of Hot Springs Mountain where it surfaces.