Hot Springs National Park
National Park. Set Aside By Congress As Hot Springs Reservation In 1832, The Oldest Federally Protected Land In The United States And Forty Years Older Than Yellowstone; Redesignated A National Park In 1921. Bathhouse Row Is A National Historic Landmark District. · Hot Springs, Arkansas
Hot Springs is the oldest federally protected land in the United States - Congress set the springs aside in 1832, forty years before Yellowstone - and it is the only national park wrapped around a city's main street. Forty-seven thermal springs surface on the western slope of Hot Springs Mountain at about 143 degrees Fahrenheit, water that fell as rain roughly four thousand years ago and has been underground ever since. The park protects the springs, the eight grand bathhouses of Bathhouse Row standing over them, and several thousand acres of wooded Ouachita ridge behind. Two bathhouses still run baths: Buckstaff has given the traditional attendant-led bath without a break since 1912, and Quapaw is a modern co-ed pool spa. A third, the Fordyce, is the park's free museum, and a fourth holds the only brewery inside an American national park. There is no entrance fee, the thermal water at the jug fountains is free to carry away, and almost nobody realises the mountain behind the shopfronts holds twenty-six miles of empty trail.
369 Central Avenue, Hot Springs, Arkansas, 71901, United States
The grounds, trails and mountain drives are open daily year-round, with the summit roads gated around dusk. The Fordyce Bathhouse visitor centre keeps daytime hours and closes on major winter holidays. The two working bathhouses are private concessions that set their own hours - Buckstaff has traditionally closed on Sundays and stopped taking people in the mid-afternoon, and Quapaw closes one weekday. Hot Springs Mountain Tower runs shorter hours in winter. Confirm all three separately; the park's hours are not theirs.
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