America’s original good-time town
In Hot Springs you can soak up healing thermal waters — and scandalous history
On race day at Oaklawn in Hot Springs, Ark., the excitement is palpable. The call to post elicits a cheer, and everyone crowds to the rail to see the thoroughbreds kicking up dirt out of the starting gate. Inside the grandstand, the beer is flowing and people are placing last-minute bets, including two women embracing the Mob-wife fashion trend (faux-fur coats, tight dresses, white-heeled boots).
Between the booze, the betting and the racetrack’s history as a gangster hangout, it’s not surprising that mafia energy is still steeping in this Arkansas city. After all, before there was Las Vegas, there was Hot Springs.
In this city, located on a fault in the Ouachita Mountains, superheated water has been bubbling up for thousands of years. It wasn’t until the early 1800s, though, that explorers and settlers discovered and commercialized the natural resource.
Early tourists arrived for relaxation, and in the days before modern medicine, the water’s mineral content drew those seeking cures for everything from arthritis to liver disease. Bathhouses sprang up along Central Avenue, and those healing waters led to Hot Springs’ designation as a national reservation in 1832, and a national park in 1921.
By the 1870s, organized crime had arrived, drawn to the city’s secluded location, boom town status and lax attitude toward law enforcement. It turned into a haven for gambling, prostitution and bootlegging.
This is my seventh visit to Hot Springs, where my mom lives. On most trips, I go for hikes and visit Garvan Woodland Gardens to see the spring blooms. But after finally watching “The Sopranos” this past winter, I’m keen to dig into the city’s mafia roots, and I drag my mom and teenage son on a ridealong.
I’m especially excited about the Gangster Museum of America, which relays Hot Springs’ Mob history through narrated stories, videos and memorabilia. Our tour guide, dressed like a “made man” in a purple fedora and suit coat, doesn’t waste any time casting aspersions on his city.
“The difference between Hot Springs and other cities was that all of the authorities supported the illegal activities,” he says, describing how Leo McLaughlin successfully ran for mayor in 1927 on a platform to “open up” the city. “By ‘open up,’ he meant gambling. Gangsters were amazed by this.”
As a result of the state-sponsored debauchery, a veritable who’s who of America’s mafioso paraded through town between the 1870s and 1930s, including Owney Madden, Lucky Luciano, Frank Costello and, most famously, Al Capone.
During Prohibition, Capone ran a moonshine operation out of Belvedere Dairy, a front company, and shipped his booze across the country in mineral water bottles. He also regularly took the waters to try to cure his syphilis, which didn’t work — he died of complications from the disease in 1947.
By the early 1920s, Hot Springs’ crude wooden bathhouses had been replaced by architectural marvels, and visitors can still go for a soak in two of the eight historic bathhouses that make up Bathhouse Row, a National Historic Landmark District. In the ’60s, a federal crackdown shuttered the casinos, and over time the city’s stories morphed from scandalous to legendary.
To cleanse our bodies (and minds) of this sordid history, we cross the street to Quapaw Bathhouse, built in the Spanish Colonial Revival style and named after the Quapaw Nation, whose people originally bathed in the area’s thermal waters. We ease into four public baths of varying temperatures, relaxing beneath stained-glass skylights.
Before we leave, I ask the attendant if Al Capone ever bathed here. “Oh, probably,” she says. “If you really want to walk in his footsteps, ask to see his suite (443) at the Arlington Hotel — there’s still a bullet hole in the wall!”
Instead, we head to the Ohio Club, the oldest bar in Arkansas and one of the city’s only original speakeasies that’s still open. Inside, a dim interior, impressive wooden bar and tin roof speak to its past, which dates to 1905. I order a large-pour Chardonnay — channelling my own Mob wife here — and drink in the history of this fascinating place.
SOME TRAVEL EXPERIENCES WERE
PROVIDED TO LISA KADANE BY VISIT HOT SPRINGS, WHICH DID NOT REVIEW OR APPROVE THIS ARTICLE.