Hot Springs National Park hosts ‘Scare’ Away Graffiti event

HOT SPRINGS — Graffiti in Hot Springs National Park is a perennial problem that the National Park Service combats by hosting several cleanup events throughout the year.

Combining “elephant snot” and elbow grease, the marks are eventually cleaned away.

“We have this very fun substance called ‘elephant snot.’ That’s the colloquial name for the chemical substance that’s used,” said Hot Springs National Park Volunteer Coordinator Kendra Barat. “It’s really, really thick. And so basically, the volunteers take it out of a big bucket, put it on to the stone overlooks, and we have brushes, and so we’ll brush it off, using proper protective equipment. So we have goggles for everybody and rubber gloves.

“We’ll scrub it off, and then we get our big water truck out there, and we power-wash it. And we actually have found that doing that twice is the best way to get it as clean as we can. So we’ll have the volunteers go back in and put more ‘elephant snot’ down, scrub it off, and then we’ll power-wash it back out.”

Volunteers were urged to take part in the graffiti removal event that was scheduled from 10 a.m. to noon Saturday. Costumes were encouraged.

Called “Scare” Away Graffiti, this is the second cleaning of the year for the historic overlooks on North and Hot Springs mountains, Barat said.

“We had a lot of volunteer events over the summer, and we just had a huge one with the National Public Lands Day,” she said. “But we didn’t have any [events] planned coming up this fall, and so we wanted to keep our momentum going from the summer.” It felt like a good time, and we hadn’t done a graffiti removal on Hot Springs and North Mountain since January of this year. And folks were noticing — we were also noticing — that the vandalism was getting pretty bad up there, so it just felt like overall a good time to host another one.”

The cleaning process does not take very long, but it can be tough work. After applying the cleaner and letting it sit for 20-40 minutes, depending on temperatures, volunteers take their brushes and scrub away the markings.

“Our event in a few weeks is going to be two hours, which should be plenty of time. We’re starting at the overlook on Hot Springs Mountain, the first one with the pagoda, and then we’re going to probably move to either one or both of the North Mountain overlooks further down Hot Springs Mountain Drive just because we’ll have enough time,” Barat said.