Water boy with can filled with hot spring water and cups for health seekers to drink.

Hot Springs National Park is an unusual blend of a highly developed park in a small city surrounded by low-lying mountains abounding in plant life and wildlife. It is a park with a past, too. The picture above shows Bathhouse Row as it looked in 1888. None of these bathhouses exists in this form today, although some of the names live on in present-day structures. New, fireproof structures took their places. The Fordyce Bathhouse which houses the park visitor center sits on the site of the Palace in the above drawing. The water boy with his pot and cups (left) was a familiar sight in the late 1800s.

Water. That's what attracts people to Hot Springs National Park. Old documents indicate that American Indians knew about and bathed in the hot springs during the late 1700s and early 1800s. Their ancestors may have also known about the hot springs. Some believe that the traces of minerals and an average temperature of 143ºF/62ºC give the waters whatever therapeutic properties they may have. People also drink the waters from the cold springs which have different chemical components and properties.  Besides determining the chemical composition and origins of the waters, scientists have determined that the waters issuing from these hot springs are more than 4,000 years old. The park collects 700,000 gallons a day for use in the public drinking fountains and bathhouses.