If these walls could talk

The springs and the 1832 reservation

In 1832 the federal government set aside the hot springs as the Hot Springs Reservation, the oldest record of land set aside by the federal government for preservation. Congress renamed it Hot Springs National Park on March 4, 1921.

The park protects 47 hot springs. According to the National Park Service, they produce over 700,000 gallons a day at an average of 143°F, and the water fell as rain roughly 4,400 years before it comes back up.

The gambling era

From the late 1920s until 1967, Hot Springs ran one of the country's largest illegal gambling operations. The Southern Club on Central Avenue was the oldest of the big clubs. The Vapors opened on Park Avenue in 1960 and booked headliners such as Tony Bennett, Phyllis Diller and Liberace.

Owney Madden, the New York gangster who had owned the Cotton Club, moved to Hot Springs in 1934. In 1936 Charles "Lucky" Luciano was arrested here while vacationing, after New York prosecutor Thomas Dewey launched a manhunt for him.

The open gambling ended in 1967, when Governor Winthrop Rockefeller had the state police raid the clubs. The Vapors building reopened in 2020 as Vapors Live, a music and entertainment venue.

Spring training and Babe Ruth

In 1886 Cap Anson brought the Chicago White Stockings to Hot Springs to get in shape before the season, and Hot Springs is often called the birthplace of spring training. Other teams followed for decades.

The Boston Red Sox trained at Majestic Park in 1909-1910 and 1912-1918. On March 17, 1918, Babe Ruth hit a home run at nearby Whittington Park that cleared Whittington Avenue and landed in a pond at the Arkansas Alligator Farm. In 2011 its distance was put at 573 feet. A historical marker stands outside the alligator farm.

Lake Hamilton

Lake Hamilton was created in 1932 when Arkansas Power & Light completed Carpenter Dam on the Ouachita River. The reservoir covers about 7,200 acres with roughly 200 miles of shoreline, much of it now lined with homes.