Hot Springs: A Hot Time Can Still Be Had in the Old Town

Hot Springs is a misty city of legend and lore.

The 140-degree, mineral-laden waters spilled from the mountain for thousands of years, spawning Native American legends and a sacred ground where warring tribes convalesced in peace.

The warm vapors and natural resources attracted white settlers, and the area eventually became the first designated area in the National Park system. In the Roaring ’20s, the area’s tourist culture and wide-open (though illegal) gambling brought big-time mobsters from the North into the tubs along Bathhouse Row and the first-class hotels.

Hot Springs is an icon of Arkansas, but there’s more to Hot Springs than tales of training camp baseball players loose in the streets, Al Capone’s bathing escapades and Tony Bennett’s first whack at singing “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” at the Black Orchid Club.

It’s more, even, than the boyhood home of President Bill Clinton.

Hot Springs is also a story of a town and its leaders’ and residents’ unflagging willingness to rebuild after natural disasters and retool when the winds of political change blew away long-established economic foundations.

“We are a resilient people,” said Orville Albritton, a Hot Springs native and author of recently released “Leo and Vern,” which tackles the history of the town up through the 1960s. “One of the most remarkable things I learned while researching — and that’s how the book ends — is that it’s the people that made Hot Springs.”

In the Beginning

Hot Springs’ history could go back millions of years — to the formation of Hot Springs Mountain where the hot water surfaces. Even its human significance dates back many centuries, beginning with the Native Americans who first discovered the springs.

Legends without definitive proof hold that Spaniard Hernando de Soto and his companions were the first Europeans to set foot in the springs in the mid-1500s. French trappers, hunters and traders were definitely familiar with Hot Springs more than a century before the 1803 Louisiana Purchase ceded the territory to the young United States from France.

William Dunbar and George Hunter were sent to explore the area, and their report on the “Hot Springs of the Washita” generated interest back East. By 1832 — four years before Arkansas’ statehood — the U.S. government set aside the area as protected land — in effect, the first national park.

Later, tent-like structures served as bathhouses until rickety wooden buildings were constructed.

Construction bathhouses — some of them downright luxurious — accelerated in the 1870s, and the federal government even ran a U.S. Free Bathhouse. The area acquired new nicknames like “The National Spa” and slogans such as “Uncle Sam Bathes the World.”

In 1921, the Hot Springs Reservation was rolled officially into the fledgling National Park Service as the country’s 18th national park.

The Bathhouses

The widely held belief, promoted by the locals, that the hot mineral waters had curative powers made bathhouses the first major tourism draw for Hot Springs. They still hold a prominent place along Central Avenue, the downtown’s main street.

“The reputation of the bathing facilities has gone all around the world,” said Mike Branch, 53, manager of the Buckstaff Bathhouse, and a lifelong Hot Springs resident.

The Buckstaff is the last stand-alone bathhouse operating along the row, although several hotels — including the landmark Arlington — still maintain their own bathhouses. Operating continuously since 1912, the Buckstaff has about 30,000 annual visitors and a staff of 40 who help bathe, massage and pamper.

Faith in the medicinal value of the waters gave way to modern medicine as the 20th century marched on, turning Bathhouse Row into an anachronistic curiosity.

“The customer base has basically died off over the years,” Branch said. “There’s no medical proof of advantages, but we do have customers who cite a relaxation aspect. People take relaxation for granted. Then they come here and say they’re surprised not to hurt anymore.”

Renewed interest in holistic medicine and natural therapies has led to a slight rebound in bathhouse business, he said.

“In the past 15 years, there has been a basic increase in business,” Branch said. “There was, from the 1940s to 1980s, a gradual decrease in business. It will probably be a factor in the near future that people are rediscovering a natural way of doing things.”

The old Fordyce Bathhouse now serves as a restored museum of what bathhouse culture once was — various hot mineral water treatments, beautiful stained glass windows and relaxation and exercise.

All six of the bathhouses along Central Avenue — known as “Bathhouse Row” — are owned and leased for as long as 60 years by the National Park Service, said Dale Moss, acting supervisor of Hot Springs National Park.

Intensive lobbying by Arkansas’ congressional delegation, civic and business leaders and hired lobbyists came up with $17 million in federal funds to maintain, repair and stabilize the deteriorating bathhouses, Moss said. Three bathhouses will be complete in 2005 and another three in 2006.

When the renovated buildings are again available for lease, they may be used as restaurants or retail shops, Moss said.

“This is the only place in the country that you can find these kinds of buildings,” Moss said. “But we’ve realized times have changed and there is no way that six bathhouses could survive. If they could, they’d all still be in business.”

Unlike visitors of old, who would spend weeks in Hot Springs and use the baths daily, today’s tourists are generally in town for a few days and may make a single trip to a bathhouse simply for the experience.

“They’re an extra magnet for attracting conventions,” Hot Springs City Manager Kent A. Myers said of the baths. “People out there want the opportunity to go inside them.”

Horst Fisher, 64, who has managed the Arlington Hotel since 1979, says he’s been promoting the hot baths ever since he arrived. Interest among guests in their 30s and 40s is on the upswing, he said.

“There hasn’t been a year where our bathing (customers) haven’t gone up,” Fisher said.

Sin City

Despite the baths, Hot Springs’ legacy has not been entirely clean.

“Hot Springs was a wide-open gambling town and widely known as a meeting place for mobsters where they sat their guns down,” said Terry Wallace, a spokesman for Oaklawn Park. “The Nittis and the Capones would sit down and talk.”

“Gambling was just a part of our history…. It adds a glamour and romance to the community,” Myers said, acknowledging that Mafia lore is highlighted on city tours.

More importantly, illegal gambling was good for Hot Springs, said Albritton, whose father was a firefighter who spent off-duty hours as a guard at the Southern Club. As many as eight illegal casinos operated, along with several prostitution houses, he said.

“They essentially thumbed their nose at the state Constitution,” said Albritton. “Because of it being an open town, there was a type of atmosphere that it wasn’t only open to gambling, but it was open to notable mobsters — Capone, Bugs Moran, Lucky Luciano — who were welcome. The mayor said come on down, vacation here, spend your money, but just don’t cause any trouble.”

Although Hot Springs was viewed as the state’s “stepchild,” it brought in a lot of revenue for business and state coffers, he said.

W.S. Jacobs, appointed by the city to oversee gambling, also patrolled prostitution. He issued minor fines — perhaps $35 — twice a month for gambling and once a month for prostitution, for appearances sake.

Gambling fines later were based on the number of tables, slots, or roulette wheels per establishment, Albritton said.

The Arlington and other hotels with bathhouse facilities were popular places for mobsters, who liked the feel of getting everything they needed in one building.

In 1967 the gambling crackdown commenced, and the town stagnated.

“This was the second home for mobsters, we were the Mecca of gambling,” said Fisher. “We were 80 percent or more full at the time, unheard for any hotel. When gambling was shut down, Hot Springs didn’t know what to do, how to survive.”

But the city maintained its image as a fun place to go and prospered with a shift to a city manager local government, a focus on tourism and somewhat higher taxes, Albritton said.

Oaklawn Races On

Oaklawn Park, celebrating its 100th anniversary this year, is another example of a Hot Springs icon that changed with the times.

“This place kind of grew at the same time as Hot Springs did and as illegal gambling did,” said Oaklawn spokesman Wallace. “We grew hand in hand for the last 100 years. They coined the Arkansas phrase, the ‘Fifth Season’ for us — winter, summer, fall, spring and then Oaklawn.”

When the state finally cracked down on illegal gambling in 1967, the track, one of only two legal gambling venues in the state, survived and even thrived during the 1970s and ’80s.

“Pretty soon, there was lots of racing everywhere and then casinos came to Mississippi,” Wallace said. “And that had a very negative impact on our business.”

Oaklawn’s peak wagering season was 1984, when $179 million was wagered over 62 racing days. By 1989, that number was down to $119 million, but the number of live racing fans was still over 1 million.

Oaklawn responded to industry changes and new casinos in other states by adopting simulcast race wagering in 1990. That allowed Oaklawn visitors to wager year-round on races at tracks around the country and watch races live by satellite feed. In turn, race fans at other tracks could wager on Oaklawn’s races.

Simulcast wagering helped save Oaklawn, Wallace said, as the competition for gambling dollars intensified with the opening in 1992 of legalized casinos directly across the Mississippi River from Helena at Tunica, Miss. The effect on Oaklawn (and on Southland Greyhound Park at West Memphis) was dramatic.

In 1995, Oaklawn attracted just under 900,000 live racing fans during the 63-day season and 194,000 simulcast fans. Last year, the track counted just under 585,000 live racing visitors. Oaklawn has stopped tracking simulcast fans, but the last count in 2002 was 202,500.

Wagering on live races has dwindled as well, to $48.6 million last year — barely a quarter of the 1984 high-water mark. But another $179.3 million was bet in simulcast wagering directed from other tracks and $50 million in wagering from Oaklawn on races around the country, Wallace said.

Oaklawn officials also added Instant Racing in 2000, an electronic game based on the results of actual races that allows visitors to set their own odds and bet among themselves. It’s grown from $2.9 million in wagers in 2000 to an expected $30 million-$35 million this season.

“The idea is so that we have a product here year-round so people are attracted and it helps us generate more purse money to get more important live races,” Wallace said. “It’s kept Arkansas competitive with other areas with casinos.”

Oaklawn officials tried to sell Arkansans on several casino gambling plans that either failed in the state legislature or were soundly defeated in statewide ballot initiative votes.

“We got crushed,” Wallace said. “So much money was invested by Mississippi casinos in Arkansas and fueled a TV campaign … So rather than do battle again, we decided to develop a new product and compete as best we could.”

Oaklawn may never throw weight behind casino initiatives again.

“Those casinos have way more resources than we could ever muster,” Wallace said. “They can always put a lot more money out there than we can, so it’s clear we have to be creative and have good customer service and be the best race track we can possibly be.

“We’re still alive and still one of the important race tracks.”

For the 100th anniversary, Oaklawn officials have set up a $5 million bonus for a horse that wins the Arkansas Derby (a $1 million purse this year), the Rebel Stakes and the Kentucky Derby.

The Ageless Arlington

Fisher planned to stay just a few years, when he arrived from Chicago to manage the Arlington in 1979. The Arlington has been owned since 1954 by Monty Scott’s Southwest Hotel Inc., which also owns the Majestic Hotel.

“On the outside (the Arlington) looked like an old rundown hotel, and the inside wasn’t much better,” Fisher said. “In 1979, the city was pretty much closed downtown. The JCPenney’s (and) the Dillard’s were closing. It became like a ghost town, buildings were being boarded up, there were signs warning that buildings were dangerous — there were a lot of negative vibes from downtown.

“It was a challenge, but I had the feeling I could do something about it.”

The state’s largest hotel, now at 523 rooms and suites, needed help.

He changed attitudes and menus and asked the Scotts to invest — sometimes $1 million at a time — in the hotel’s future. Besides renovations and constant maintenance on the Arlington, Fisher realized the charm value of other old downtown buildings.

More than $1 million was spent restoring the century-old, 250-room Majestic.

“In America, when something is old, people are fast to tear it down,” said Fisher, who is originally from Germany.

The Arlington got behind a downtown improvement program with other business owners and eventually helped spur downtown renovation. It’s own million-dollar, four-year renovation effort was completed about two years ago.

“The Arlington is a one-of-a-kind building you don’t find anywhere else, but if the downtown isn’t coming back, the whole city is going down,” Fisher said. “Customers don’t come for just one place, but the total experience. If all you have is the Arlington, it’s not enough.”

New hotel furnishings were added, the motor lobby was renovated, and elevators were fixed over the years, while the city added a new convention center and better police and fire coverage. Rooms have been redone three times during Fisher’s tenure.

The results have been good. In the late 1970s and 1980s, the hotel had an 82 to 85 percent occupancy rate in March — the height of the Oaklawn’s live racing season — but had to hang on for the rest of the year. In recent years, the hotel maintains year-round occupancy rates of about 62-64 percent.

“The job isn’t finished, it’s an ongoing process,” Fisher said. “You’re never finished … I’ll probably retire at this hotel.”

The Future

Like any city, challenges await Hot Springs.

But Hot Springs has a history of action to show it rises to challenges. For instance, the city bit the bullet and created a central business district with higher property taxes that generated millions to pay off district improvement bonds.

“Looking at the history of the last 12 or 14 years, it was the first step in improving Hot Springs,” said Myers, the city manager. “It took the central business district to make one of the best downtowns in the country so that it would not only draw tourists but local people to restaurants and shops.

“Investors look at the amount of community cooperation, and they don’t want to invest multi-millions of dollars in a project in an unstable community,” he continued. “This is a case where the community said we had to have a broad economic impact. The downtown is clearly the heart of the community.”

An improved downtown over the years makes it “somewhat easier” for Hot Springs’ convention facilities to attract business with a complete package in comparison to other cities.

“We just don’t have a downtown retail area; we have hiking and walks, the Promenade, restaurants, and Lake Hamilton nearby,” Myers said.

Additional attractions for Hot Springs include the Hot Springs Convention Center and its recent expansion to 360,000 SF, a new $27 million sports/entertainment arena, recent completion of a $35 million, 252-room Embassy Hotel, and a voter-approved bond issue of $4.4 million to fund a new $7 million roller coaster for Magic Springs & Crystal Falls theme park.

Hot Springs Municipal Airport may not compete well with Little Rock National Airport just an hour away, Myers said, but it has been able to keep its federal commercial carrier subsidy. In two years, the Hot Springs airport has spent $5 million to improve terminal facilities and extend the runway, and its volume of private aircraft traffic is increasing.

“All towns have difficulties, and Hot Springs definitely has theirs,” said Branch, the manager of the Buckstaff bathhouse. “But there is potential to do great things. If we can all work together we can give Branson (Mo.) and a few others a run for their money.”

Bigger Things

Growth management will be a sticky issue.

“The question is, will we be protecting the beauty of Hot Springs?” Myers said. “I hope that we won’t go out and destroy a lot of the trees and natural beauty or part of the lakefront areas…. It’s the aesthetics that draw people to Hot Springs. But our developers seem to understand that.”

Although Hot Springs experienced rapid growth in the years immediately after World War II, the city’s population remained stagnant for the past 30 years.

Garland County, however, enjoyed a 20 percent increase in population during the 1990s — thanks in great part to the influx of retirees to Cooper Communities’ Hot Springs Village.

That growth at Hot Springs Village has spurred local home buying and building, and retail and auto sales — not to mention a booming medical services business to care for the older population.

The city’s emergence as a regional center for retail and commercial activity, and the sales tax revenue those things bring, could help mitigate the cyclical nature of the tourism industry.

It’s also bringing more conservative Republicans to a traditionally Democratic and a notoriously unconservative area.

“It’s like we’ve come full circle,” said Steve Arrison, director of the Hot Springs Advertising and Promotion Commission. “We were America’s first resort and now our product is better than ever.”