The ‘Little Rock Highway’

There have been three different “Little Rock highways” that have connected Hot Springs to Benton and the Capitol City over the last 100 years.

Before 1925, the only road from Hot Springs to Little Rock was the Lonsdale Road. The route of this rural dirt road was to the east out Spring Street, then past the Cutter Morning School and through the small community of

Lonsdale. It was a winding and dusty unpaved road.

Before 1925, automobile travel to Hot Springs from Little Rock was difficult. Most visitors to Hot

Springs came by train, which provided dependable service several times each day. With the dramatic growth of automobile ownership by the 1920s, it was clear Hot Springs needed a better highway to connect to Little Rock. A new road was carved out of the hills and forests in north Garland and Saline Counties that connected Park Avenue to the city of Benton. The route went out Park Avenue by Belvedere Country Club and then east on Highway 5 past the Highway 7 junction for 30 miles to the city of Benton.

From the 1920s until the late 1950s, Park Avenue was the main entrance into Hot Springs. The popularity of this new highway was evidenced by the dozen new tourist courts that were built along Park Avenue to cater to visitors arriving by car.

Older baby boomers will recall the many curves along the old Little Rock highway. Car sickness was a frequent complaint of children riding in the back seat. Many boomers still have unpleasant memories of their parents having to pull over on the side of the highway so that the sick child could throw up.

In 1959, construction of the new Highway 70 east was completed. Known locally as the “New Little Rock Highway,” the new route went out East Grand Avenue and connected with Interstate 30. This became the primary entrance to Hot Springs in place of Park Avenue. This new route also became the site of many modern motels located along East Grand Avenue including the Holiday Inn, Travelaire, and Howard Johnson. These motels took away much of the lodging business from the older tourist courts that had been built along Park Avenue in the 1920s and 1930s.

Road construction languished in Hot Springs from the 1960s to the 1980s. One suspicion about the lack of state highway funding in Hot Springs was that there had been a quiet understanding that Hot Springs could keep its illegal gambling but would not ask for new highways. Also, for many years Hot Springs did not have a highway commissioner to advocate for local new roads. This resulted in Hot Springs being one of the last cities to receive funding for a modern bypass similar to those that had been built elsewhere around the state since the 1960s.

Fortunately, in the mid 1980s, then-Gov. Bill Clinton appointed a highway commissioner from Hot Springs and our roads began to improve. In 1987, construction of the new Martin Luther King Expressway started. This new 12-mile long bypass cost over $100 million to build.

Since the 1990s, there has been a number other of major road improvement projects throughout Garland County. This includes the widening of Higdon Ferry Road, the recent extension of the four lane out Highway 7 south, and improvements to Highway 70 and 270 west.

In 2017, Highway 70 east was rebuilt as a four-lane highway at a cost of $80 million. Construction work on the extension of the King Expressway to Highway 7 north (close to Hot Springs Village) has already started. Since the 1980s, over $500 million has been spent on local highway improvements. Hot Springs has finally been receiving its fair share of state-funded highway improvements in the last three decades. Today’s youngsters riding in the back seat are no longer as likely to get car sick as did their baby boomer parents back in the 1950s from road trips on the narrow and curvy Old Little Rock Highway.