Guest historian suggests‘ re thinking’ relationships with the national parks

In conjunction with the centennial of Hot Springs National Park, this month’s Garland County Historical Society meeting will feature a program by a guest historian who suggests “rethinking our relationship” with national parks.

Historian Dan Chmill believes that the park’s centennial offers an “excellent opportunity to remind us how the wonder of the natural world in our national parks does not vanish if humans are part of the equation. Instead of places preserved without people, the parks are, and have always been, places where humans interact with nature and learn something about the site and them

selves,” the society said in a news release.

Chmill’s program, “Celebrating Hot Springs National Park’s Centennial by Rethinking Our Relationship with the National Parks,” will take place on Zoom at noon Tuesday. The public is welcome to participate by visiting https://us02web.zoom. us/j/82659500014.

Chmill, a Ph.D. candidate in the History Department at the University of Kansas, is trained as an environmental historian, a subfield of history that studies the relationships created between the human and nonhuman worlds across time and space, the release said. His dissertation, “Taking the Waters: A Hydrological History of Health and Leisure in Hot Springs National Park,” bridges the often separate natural and human histories of Hot Springs.

“Visitors often travel to the 63 national parks scattered across the United States under the impression that the parklands are wide expanses of untouched nature preserved in perpetuity for themselves and generations to enjoy. They are wild places innately separate from humans.

“The public’s unwillingness to let go of this romantic and ahistorical perception of the parks has confused the millions of visitors who have driven down Central Avenue and into Hot Springs National Park for the past 100 years. The park is set in the middle of a bustling town, and its namesake, the springs and their acclaimed thermal waters, no longer reside in nature, piped into hidden reservoirs and elegant bath houses instead of bubbling up from the ground,” the release said.

“This situation, the result of constant innovation on the part of ordinary citizens and park administrators, has frustrated some, leading many to deem Hot Springs unworthy of its national park designation.”

According to the historical society, Chmill makes the argument that, looking at the park’s history, “not only was Hot Springs vital to the early American national park project, but the relationship between humans and the park’s waters demonstrates a new and refreshing way to look at how the public can enjoy our national parks.

Submitted photo Jules Falk, pictured at the Noble Fountain at Central Avenue and Reserve Street, enjoys a cup of thermal water around 1917. In the background center is the Lamar Bath House with a pumping station at its right. Photo is courtesy of the Garland County Historical Society.

Submitted photo The Maurice Bath House, left, and the original Fordyce Bath House about 100 years ago. Photo is courtesy of the Garland County Historical Society.

Submitted photo Visitors at the corner of Reserve Street and Central Avenue on Feb. 12, 1921. A few weeks later, on March 4, 1921, Hot Springs Reservation officially became Hot Springs National Park. The south end of Bathhouse Row consisted of, right to left, a pump station, the first Lamar Bath House, and the Buckstaff Bath House. Photo is courtesy of the Garland County Historical Society.