Hot Springs is perfect place to do a little exploring
That Hernando de Soto. He sure got around. The intrepid Spaniard commenced to explore and trade in the West Indies and Central America before trundling down to Peru to conquer it over the Incans. After a quick return to Spain, he set out for North America, stopping first in Cuba before landing at Tampa Bay, where he and his band of soldiers then marched through the South hunting for gold before zigzagging across Arkansas and stopping in what is now Hot Springs along about 1541.
Hot Springs honored the well-traveled explorer with a life-size statue at the Fordyce Bathhouse on Bathhouse Row in Hot Springs National Park. The statue of de Soto and an Indian maiden is inexplicably in the men’s bath, but now that Fordyce Bathhouse is the official visitors center for Hot Springs, you don’t have to be of the male persuasion to see it.
The unquestionable showstopper of Hot Springs is, well, its hot springs. The near-mythical water for thousands of years has been attracting the likes of explorers such as de Soto, and according to some accounts, Ponce de Leon, Native Americans, presidents including Truman and both Roosevelts, baseball greats with Babe Ruth and Honus Wagner among
that number, notorious gangsters such as Alphonse Gabriel Capone and Salvatore Lucania, whom you may know better as Al Capone and Lucky Luciano, health aficionados, and then just curious tourists like me.
GEOLOGY MEETS GEOGRAPHY
The genesis of Hot Springs is plain ol’ rainwater that fell more than 4,000 years ago. After seeping deep into the earth, there it percolates and heats up in the fiery furnace of rock that lies thousands of feet beneath this small patch of Arkansas real estate, its unseen energy then rising and venting to the surface in fricative bursts of steam.
The 147-degree thermal water is then gathered for all sorts of things such as bathing and drinking but more notably for submerging, soaking and massaging your cares away at one of the spas, new and old, dotting Bathhouse Row in Hot Springs National Park.
Hot Springs, set amid the wooded hills of the Ouachita Mountains, is the oldest park in the national park system. It is a unique place, certainly, sort of like its more famous cousin, Yellowstone, with its thermal yet volcanically heated water.
The allure of the healing powers of the springs was the catalyst that brought the first bathhouses to Hot Springs during America’s grand resort era of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and for Hot Springs National Park to be formally created in 1921. Several of those great stone buildings remain on Bathhouse Row, all lined up along Central Avenue in a mishmash of architectural styles, among them Neoclassical, Renaissance Revival and Spanish Colonial Revival.
Underneath the sidewalks and bathhouses, the hot springs simmer away and eventually reach the Earth’s surface. Some of the approximately 700,000 gallons that the National Park Service states flows from the springs in a single day supports “jug fountains” scattered around town and where locals come to fill their water jugs with the steamy elixir to take home.
“It’s the only national park where you’re allowed to take anything,” said Miguel Marquez, a park ranger at the time of my visit but who has since moved on. “People pull up and get jugs and jugs of it. It’s water from the beginning of time.”
WHAT TO DO
Not only can you drench yourself in the healing waters and history of the bathhouses, but you also can immerse yourself into the town and its array of restaurants, resorts and things to do.
The bathhouse experience is, of course, not to be missed. You can “take the waters,” as the folks say, at either Buckstaff Bathhouse or Quapaw Baths and Spa, the only operational bathhouses fed by the springs that are within the park.
The other historic bathhouses have been restored and transformed into other purposes. The Fordyce is the national park’s visitor center, the Superior metamorphosed into a brewery (more on that momentarily), the Hale is a luxury boutique hotel, the Lamar is a fun gift store where you can buy spa products made with the local water, and the Ozark is a cultural center.
Hot Springs is also the boyhood home of former President Bill Clinton, and Clinton tourism is big in this town with a population of about 37,000. A selfguided tour of Clinton’s
Hot Springs features, among other places, the schools he attended, two homes where he grew up, hangouts where he ate hamburgers and watched movies, and Park Place Baptist Church, where he was baptized, and, according to the brochure that I picked up at the visitor center, his mother stated that he “never missed a Sunday,” and that, if she had to work, he “on his own, would grab up his Bible and walk to church.”
I also walked the very colorful and pretty paths of Garvan Woodland Gardens, originally a native pine and hardwood forest, but now a lush botanical garden that’s home to dozens of bird species, including a peacock with whom I came face to beak and who shook his gorgeous tail feathers open into a fan that made for a few colorful photos.
At Hot Springs Mountain Tower, where our small tour group first met Marquez, we were afforded grand views of Hot Springs Mountain, the Ouachita and the glittering jewel of Diamond Lake that’s a popular summer spot for boating, skiing and swimming.
WHERE TO EAT
Hot Springs is where Southern food meets sophisticated cuisine. McClard’s Bar-B-Q Restaurant is run by the original family of McClards, now in its fourth generation of serving up barbecue beef, pork and ribs and creating its own brand of sauce to flavor it up.
“We were one of Bill Clinton’s favorite haunts before he became vegetarian,” said Scott McClard, who is now chief barbecue guru of the restaurant that’s been featured in Southern Living magazine and on the Travel Channel and earned a spot in Patricia Schultz’s “1,000 Places To See Before You Die.”
The Superior Bathhouse Brewery is the only brewery in the world that makes its beer from the hot springs and the first brewery to be located in a national park. It’s called hot springs on tap, and not only can you sample the beer but also nosh on salads, sandwiches and appetizers such as the Southern deviled eggs or, as you might guess, beer cheese soup.
Several noted fine dining restaurants are here, such as Luna Bella, where Italy meets Arkansas in the best way possible. Try Old World favorites such as eggplant Parmesan and pasta of every sort or more creative dishes including shrimp Portofino that combines shrimp with wilted spinach over angel hair pasta.
Make a day of dining in Hot Springs by starting out at the Pancake Shop for breakfast of freshly squeezed orange juice and real country ham, Deluca’s Pizzeria for lunch and what has been called the best pizza in Arkansas but where you can also get burgers and Bloody Marys, and then finish off at Luna Bella or 501 Prime, one of the newest and finest restaurants in Hot Springs for a special meal of prime rib or a range of steaks such as the Boursin filet or Hawaiian ribeye.
WHERE TO STAY
If you want a lakeside setting with opportunities for romance combined with the adventure of canoeing, boating or kayaking, the luxury Lookout Point Lakeside Inn on Lake Hamilton is ideal.
If you like historic hotels, consider the boutique Hotel Hale, the former bathhouse on Bathhouse Row, the opulent Waters Hotel that’s also on Bathhouse Row and was first built in 1913 as medical offices, and the Arlington Resort Hotel and Spa, the quintessential grand old Southern hotel that includes an opportunity to “take the waters” at its connecting Thermal Bathhouse and Spa at the Arlington.
A smattering of bed-andbreakfast inns are in Hot Springs, some dating to the 19th century, and other newer hotels such as the Hotel Hot Springs in the national park. Although not historic in the sense of the Hale and Arlington, it is within walking distance of downtown and all of its shops and restaurants.
If the excitement of Hot Springs casino gambling and horse racing is more of an enticement for you, Oaklawn Racing and Gaming is just down Central Avenue from Bathhouse Row. And later this year, the Oaklawn Casino Hotel, a 200-room luxury resort, will open so you can gamble where you sleep.
IF YOU GO
Information is available at Visit Hot Springs by visiting www.hotsprings.org or calling toll-free 800-543-2284. Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport at Little Rock, about a 60-minute drive, is the closest major airport and is served by Allegiant, American, Delta, Frontier, Southwest and United.