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Fordyce Bathhouse Visitor Center Closed
The Fordyce Bathhouse Visitor Center is closed until Fall 2013 for a major maintenance project. A temporary park Visitor Center, along with the park store, are located in the Lamar Bathhouse at the south end of Bathhouse Row. Call for more information.
Bathhouse Row
Rector Bathhouse, 1860s
National Park Service image from HOSP archives
The first bathhouses were crude structures of canvas and lumber, little more than tents perched over individual springs or reservoirs carved out of the rock. Later businessmen built wooden structures, but they frequently burned, collapsed because of shoddy construction, or rotted due to continued exposure to water and steam. Hot Springs Creek, which ran right through the middle of all this activity, drained its own watershed and collected the runoff of the springs. Generally it was an eyesore-dangerous at times of high water, and mere collections of stagnant pools at dry times. In 1884 the federal government put the creek into a channel, roofed over it over, and laid a road down above it. Much of it runs under Central Avenue and Bathhouse Row today. This allowed room for sidewalks and landscaping in front of the bathhouses, creating the Bathhouse Row you see today. Here you can link to other information about the changing face of Bathhouse Row.
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Did You Know?
The hot spring water at Hot Springs National Park becomes heated at a depth of approximately one mile before beginning the journey back to the surface through a fault.