Hot Springs is
traditionally best known for the natural spring water that gives it
its name, flowing out of the ground at a temperature of 147º
Fahrenheit (64º C). This series has been developed to tell about
many of the historical facets surrounding Hot Springs, Arkansas.
Some of the events and happenings of this city are well known and
others are more obscure.
Several of the letter connections will be quite obvious upon
arrival of the cache, while others you might derive from reading
about the history of a particular location or event. For the most
part, the caches are PnG and should be easy to locate. I hope you
enjoy this series as much as I have putting it together. I have
learned quite a bit about the town that I call home.
B is for Bathhouse Row.
The springs that
babble around
our city have been used for bathing
and healing, dating back to the Native
Americans. Beginning with explorers boasting
about the baffling healing powers that
the water possess. Before you know it bare
structures served as bathhouses until rickety
boarded buildings were built. By the 1870’s, the building ofbathhouses--some of them
bountifully beautiful— accelerated and the federal government even
ran a U.S. Free Bathhouse. The borough acquired nicknames like "The National Spa" and
banners such as
"Uncle Sam Bathes the World." This bathing
is what bolstered Hot Springs
beingon the map.
By 1875 there
are five bath houses, 12 better
hotels, many bite-size hotels and
boarding houses.
Regulations for bathingat the springs were born, surveys were
beckoned, and
the springs and the nearby mountains were bound together as Hot
Springs Reservation.
One could buy a
balmy mineral
bath in 1877 was
only 4 bits (‘bout50¢). Hot Springs had gas lighting and even some
electricity! Asbigger and better boarding
houses, bathhouses, bars, and
otherbusinesses burgeoned in Hot Springs, the population
continuouslybulged. With no medical backing
of beneficial
bonuses, beginning in the 1940s to
‘bout the
1980s, the balance in businesses went bad.There is no way that six bathhouses could survive. If
they could, they'd all still be
in business.
Today, only one
of the eight historic bathhouses
which offered baths from billionaires to barbarians and anything in
between are
still in business. Unlike visitors of old, who would spend weeks in Hot
Springs and use the baths daily, today's tourists are by and large are in town for
a few days and may make a single trip to a bathhouse basically for the
experience.The Buckstaff
Bathhouse,operating continuously since
1912, still offers traditional bathsalthough several
hotels--including the landmark Arlington--still maintain their own
bathhouses. Today, the Fordyce serves as the park’s
visitor’s center, and offers a rich history of the park and
its healing waters. Brutal lobbying by Arkansas', business leaders and others
came up with $17 million in federal funds to maintain, repair and
stabilize the deteriorating bathhouses.
This is the only place in the country
that you can find these kinds of buildings.All six of the
bathhouses along
Central Avenue--known as "BathhouseRow"--are owned and
leased for as long as 60 years by
the National Park Service.
The more your log online includes words that start with the letter
of the cache, the more interesting the logs will be. If this cache
needs attention let me
know.
