travel dates: June, 2022
What Hot Springs National Park lacks in wide open spaces and scenic beauty, it makes up for in really hot water.
Just kidding, Hot Springs: you are so much more than just hot water!
Hot Springs is an unusual National Park, though, with its urban setting and focus on human history over natural beauty (although it has some of that, too). Native Americans have been visiting the springs in this part of Arkansas for many thousands of years. In 1832, the area and the springs were granted federal protection (though official National Park designation wouldn’t come until 1921, and in the decades that followed a thriving resort town grew up around the springs, with increasingly fancy hotels and bathhouses catering to the people who came from all over seeking relief from a huge variety of ailments, from rheumatism to “the various diseases of women.”
Today the NPS preserves and maintains many of these bathhouses on “Bathhouse Row”–a couple still offer spa services (with fewer claims about the healing powers of the water), others are uses as park offices, a gift shop, a visitor center and museum, and even a brewery.
The park also encompasses a lot of the surrounding area, with opportunities for hiking and scenic drives. And there’s a lot of public land and recreational opportunities in the larger region as well, so that you could certainly make this a longer trip and see more than just the park itself. But we had just two nights here and focused exclusively on the National Park and mostly on touring Bathhouse Row.
We were still in the part of our trip where van troubles forced us to shuffle things around quite a bit, and the result here was that we were very nervous that we weren’t going to make it in time to go to to Superior Bathhouse Brewery on our arrival night, and it was going to be closed on our only full day in the area. This was scary, but…we made it!
Superior Bathhouse Brewery boasts that it’s “the only brewery in a US National Park and the only brewery in the world to utilize thermal spring water as our main ingredient.” We loved it and rank it as our favorite restaurant from the entire trip. The beer is good, the setting is quirky and fun, and the food is great. Also, I bought my favorite t-shirt there; it’s the Superior Pride one that I’m excited to see is available on the website (I’m genuinely contemplating ordering a backup in case mine falls apart from overuse): https://www.superiorbathhouse.com/shop . They have a nice patio, but when they were there they were only serving a very limited menu out there, so we opted for inside. We forgot to bring Fiesta the Beagle, but I know from the website and from some YouTube videos that they’re very dog friendly and even appear to allow dogs inside (I’d call to confirm first). So–highly recommend!
Logistics/overview: the historic bathhouses are all in a row–Bathhouse Row, if you will–along the main street in the town of Hot Springs. The other side of the street does not belong to the NPS and is home to lots of shops and restaurants. Up the hill behind the bathhouses is the “Grand Promenade”–a half mile stroll that will give you a different perspective on the springs and the bathhouses. And then there’s a scenic loop drive in this same in town area where you can take in some views of the surrounding area. There’s no admission fee for the park or any of the buildings. It was pretty busy when we were there, but we were able to find street parking not too far away a couple of times and parked in the parking deck downtown another time (it was tall enough for the van!)
We started our day at the Fordyce Bathhouse, which serves as the park’s visitor center and museum. Or at least we meant to. Dave dropped us off to take the van in to get things checked out for the 40 millionth time, and we only realized after he’d pulled away that it was closed that morning for AC repairs. They had rangers out front to answer questions and hand out junior ranger books, so we picked up one of those for Abe right around the same time it started to pour (van troubles and storms were our twin companions for the first stretch of our trip). So we settled in on the pleasant front porch to work on the booklet for bit:
The rain didn’t last long, but it came and went all day. We got stuck in it again when we came back after lunch and parked in the parking deck:
While there are lovely bathhouses all up and down the street, Fordyce is the only one that’s set up for visitors to tour and see what bathhouse life was like back in Hot Spring’s heyday, so the fact that it was closed was a major wrench in our plans. But we were determined to see as much as we could (and, hey–we’d already had beer at the only brewery inside a US National Park, so everything else was gravy, right?) Dave got back fairly quickly and we set off to explore the outside parts of Bathhouse Row.
The junior ranger booklet here is set up to take you around the park in a scavenger hunt like way, which is always my favorite as it kind of lays out a touring plan for you. We went around the corner from Fordyce for our first taste of spring water (there are a few different places around the park where you can sample the water):
And then we wandered around, following the book and doing the activities and looking at the pretty buildings:
Eventually we made our way up to the Grand Promenade and walked along that (it’s easy to make a nice loop that way, by walking down to the end of Bathhouse Row and going up there for the trip the other way):
By then it was lunchtime; we’d packed sandwiches and decided, since it was pretty wet and gray for a picnic, to eat them while we did the scenic drive loop. The drive is not the most scenic thing you’re going to find in a national park, but it is pleasant (there’s a spur you can take to the highest point on the drive that we skipped, figuring it wasn’t the best day for scenic overlooks anyway with the clouds). There’s a tower you can go up in for an extra fee (it’s not run by the NPS) and we skipped that, too. But we did pose for pictures in their bathtub:
When we finished the drive, we were delighted to discover that the Fordyce Bathhouse was open again (that morning they hadn’t been sure if they’d be open at all that day). Fordyce is the only bathhouse where you can see what things were like back in Hot Springs’ commercial prime, and it’s a fascinating bit of time travel experience. Abe’s junior ranger book again provided a helpful guide for exploring, but it’s a fairly straightforward self-guided tour with lots of signs around to explain things if you don’t have a junior ranger with you.
Fun fact: the men’s side is WAY fancier (and bigger) than the women’s side:
But this was a bit of a problem, we learned, because sometimes they were, as one sign told us “badly crowded with lady bathers.”
The whole thing is really interesting to see, and I’d allow at least an hour to see it all.
After we checked out the whole place, Abe turned in his junior ranger book and got his badge:
Then we watched the park film, which was a little dated but gave a good overview of the history of the town. While we were waiting for it, Gus posed like this and told me this would be the best picture I took for the whole trip, so I felt like I should definitely include it here:
Next up: more west!
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