The water’s hot – really hot – coming out of the ground in Hot Springs, Arkansas. And the tree houses available to book for overnight stays are definitely cool.
Clear, clean water for drinking or soaking, and abundantly interesting lodging choices framed my Hot Springs explorations. At least eight other experiences showed me how this town of 38,000 people in central Arkansas serves up diverse, dive-deep, fun things to do.
Think category for those eight; each one holds lots of other parts. Intriguing the ways they intersect when I paid attention.
Here’s a look at what I did, and would find quite fun to do again. Some vacations trigger a “been there, done that” attitude, but Hot Springs left me with desires to repeat.
- Public Bathing
- National Park Downtown-Style
- Avant Mining
- Gardens in a Mountain
- Murals Filling Outside Walls
- Gangsters as History
- Places to Eat
- Places to Stay
Plenty of people go to Oaklawn in Hot Springs for the 24/7 casino and hotel, and for the Thursday to Sunday horse racing in December through the end of April. I have no personal experience with either. . . but did enjoy the Savory Pantry on main street known as Central Avenue with jockey silks and Derby-style foods and gifts.
This trip was hosted 100% but all opinions are entirely my own.
Public Bathing
Choose naked in the Buckstaff bathhouse. That’s how the gangsters did it in 1912, and I’m guessing Mae West did too.
Today staff toga-wrap each bather in a big sheet for moving from treatment to treatment so modesty’s honored. I sensed some regret in the women who opted to wear a bathing suit.
Buckstaff does things the old way so brace yourself for a high-sided soaking tub with ancient pipes. Know the thermal waters exit the ground at 143 degrees so trust the attendant waving towels to cool a bit before wrapping you after the tub time.
Towel wraps happen on a gurney, stretched out long in that torso-concealing sheet, an arm reach away from others.
Calm yourself to enter a metal box with only your head sticking out for steam therapy, and follow that plopping down in a sort-of sitz bath right next to another woman doing the same, feet on the tile floor, knees up toward the ears like in a ’57 Thunderbird.
Men, by the way, experience Buckstaff on the first floor and women on the second.
Last treatment in the wonders of history and mineral rich waters is a massage in a private space, kind of as pivot back to something familiar.
SheBuysTravel Tip: Go to the National Park museum before experiencing Buckstaff. That’s the way to immerse in the experience, not interrupt it by judging the look of the place and the equipment. This can be living history when done in a learning order.
No reservations are possible so eating an early lunch and getting in line for afternoon waters is the best plan.
Quapaw is the bathhouse for wearing a suit in the waters, and booking a massage, facial and hot stone alignment. Pack non-skid pool slippers before leaving home because they’re required.
National Park Downtown Style
Yes, hikes of multiple miles, some strenuous, shape the Hot Springs National Park options.
But special to this place is merging park and city, grassy spaces and downtown architecture, shopping, dining and trailheads.
Bathhouse Row connects yesterday to today. Eight bathhouses flourished from 1892 to 1923 so walking on Central Avenue or the National Historic Landmark District Grand Promenade fuels the chance to conjure up past visitors ….lots and lots of them when Hot Springs was a popular resort.
Access other trails from the paved, half-mile Promenade – or simply claim the downtown National Park experience as accomplishment enough.
Turning water into medicine: that’s a big part of the Hot Springs story and the former Fordyce bathhouse sets the stage for telling that story. As a visitor welcome center and National Park Service museum, the building anchors the public health history.
People chose Hot Springs to heal with the thermal waters, and to engage in the outdoors.
Today, some giggle when learning the gangsters believed the waters would cure their neuro-syphillis.
Bath attendants from 1910 on studied for their jobs, considered a professional corps of workers. Their customers stayed three weeks or more for the full wellness protocol.
A sign in the Superior Bathhouse turned brewery for today’s visitors declares some old prices: 18 baths $70.10 and 18 treatments (that meant massage) $93.15.
“Receiving” the baths, not “taking” a bath reflects the vocabulary of the early Hot Springs era. So does “stateroom,” as in cruise talk. Here it means a room in the bathhouse for resting between treatments, occasionally even overnight.
The Fordyce bathhouse gymnasium – museum quality – tells a wellness story of attracting athletes off-season, and launching baseball’s spring training.
A gallery is devoted to Babe Ruth and baseball in the Hot Springs Gangster Museum of America.
Avant Mining
Healing happens in Hot Springs with crystals too, so the stories say. And visitors dig them up, or scavenge upturned ground to spot and claim a treasure with the guidance of Avant Mining.
SheBuysTravel Tip: Hang out in the coffee shop and gift store at Avant Mining on Fisher Mountain to learn crystal lore from the staff and crystal love from local people who dig there often. Buy a bag of locally roasted coffee and expect a crystal within.
The road from shop to mining land is long and a bit bumpy; the experience builds on itself as spotting a crystal feeds a desire for the next one, hopefully clear, not opaque.
Plan to pay $25, $10 for children. Take a trowel from home or pay to rent mining tools.
Quartz crystals can be 250 million years old, and the veins they’re in 450 million. I rather like the opportunity Hot Springs gives me to contemplate age – National Park rangers say the thermal waters were raindrops 4,500 years ago.
Gardens in a Mountain
Garvan Woodland Gardens in the Ouachita Mountains deserves two visits, or more.
First, with a guide, in a golf cart. 210 acres these gardens, the plantings diverse and the stories both horticultural and architecturally interesting. There’s enough to learn that the extra $20 per person feels worth it.
Second, stroll. And gaze, and sniff. Muse about the names of spaces like Garden of the Pine Wind, Floating Cloud Bridge and Old Brick Hill laid in an autumn leaves pattern. Or Singing Springs Gorge visible by walking the serpentine canopy of oak, hickory, pine and ash trees.
Philanthropy is a big part of the Garvan Woodland Gardens founding story and so is the current operational structure. The University of Arkansas School of Architecture and Design Is at the helm, and that seems to influence my feeling of delight with structures as well as flowers and trees and shrubs.
The chapel with its 60-foot high trussed glass ceiling attracts wedding parties and iconic photo posts.
The three-level tree house offers kids (and the rest of us wanting to climb too) subtle insights into how trees grow. That’s what “dendrology” means.
And the pavilion of redwood and sandstone demands backbends and neck twisting to gaze at the oculus – a round opening at the tippy top revealing the sky.
Murals Filling Outside Walls
First Friday gallery walks started 33 years ago in Hot Springs. Every day, the 22 outside murals command plenty of attention.
Addresses, artist names, mural story lines pull up easily on the web for a walking or driving tour.
Gangsters As History
If gangsters embody larger-than-life stories, their legacy lives on in Hot Springs where the eight-gallery museum devoted to those tales introduces memorable historians.
Executive Director Robert Raines and his team of museum docents add even more perspective to the excellent videos setting stages in each gallery of the Gangster Museum of America.
A Few of the Places to Eat
The Ohio Club
Perhaps I should be intrigued that Al Capone and Lucky Luciano, probably Babe Ruth too, ate dinner at The Ohio Club before I got there. The heavy wooden bar they might have leaned on is so big a wall had to be cut open to move it in.
What I liked better was meeting today’s servers—all storytellers, steeped in that gangster and spring training history, and the healing waters and wellness eras of Hot Springs.
They’re serving up more than Wagyu or guacamole burgers, salads, sandwiches and massive charcuterie boards with prohibition-style cocktails.
Live music many nights harkens back to the jazz and blues of Hot Springs’ early resort years.
SheBuysTravel Tip: Ask to meet Saddiq Mir; he’s the owner, a visionary who speaks five languages, an accomplished hotelier who left his native Kashmir at age 15 and built careers in Europe before falling in love with Hot Springs. And by the way, “mir” means peace.
J & S Italian Villa, Copper Penny Irish pub, Indulge Sweet & Savory and Small Speakeasy are all eateries under the J&S Hospitality Group. The “S” is Saddiq and the “J” his wife Jeannie.
I saved eating at any of them for another trip.
SQZBX Pizza Joint & Brewery
The dough’s hand tossed, the pizza toppings oh-so-fresh and the mozzarella is too for the caprese salad.
The family of owners care a lot about music and that’s a clue to saying the restaurant name: think accordion or squeezebox.
SQZBX is not on the main Central Avenue with Bathhouse Row but nearby on Ouachita Avenue, a less bustling location.
Stubby’s Bar-B-Que
Eat in at Stubby’s, or order a picnic for 10 and enjoy in a treehouse lodge or lakeside accommodation.
Ten’s not the mandatory number but offered up on the wall-filling menu board for $170. Seems reasonable given the size of the BBQ-stuffed baked potatoes or the ribs and chicken pieces.
Richard Stubblefield created the menus and the sauce in 1952, with slow cooking the mantra ever since.
Red Light Roastery
Roasting happens here and the fragrance is fabulous. Big bags of coffee beans spread across the floor in the roasting room become a geography lesson: Brazil, Colombia, Uganda, Ethiopia, Guatemala.
My oatmeal breakfast with apples fueled me for a Hot Springs morning, and a look at some pieces of crystal and quartz for sale helped me hold on to my Avant Mining memories.
Maybe the business card near the energy bar of turmeric, ginger and pistachios gives a clue to deeper potential at Red Light Roastery—-contact for a nomadic healing alchemist.
Kollective Coffee + Tea, Deluca’s Pizzeria, the Pancake Shop, Superior Bathhouse Brewery and Origami Sake all offer experiences as well as memorable flavors. SheBuysTravel observant writer Cathy Kopf covers the details.
Some of the Places to Stay
Starlight Haven
I lived in a treehouse named Mountain Air in Hot Springs—-tall flight of stairs to get up and views to forever from my room and deck, every which way.
Looking into the tops of trees and the stars while stretched out in a hot tub ought to be everyone’s experience at least once.
Even my four-poster bed told the up-high story; I could have used a step stool.
Starlight Haven also accommodates people preferring round and lower level sleeping with geodesic dome lodging.
Each one has a spacious deck with hot tub and chairs so the ground level view also wraps in the woods. . . 26 acres in total.
Safari tents are the third option at Starlight Haven.
In The Trees
Another treehouse lodging option in the Ouachita Mountains called In The Trees also includes ground level cabins as well as tall flights of exterior stairs.
Both styles rely on windows both tall and wide to invite the woodsy vistas inside.
Calm is readily available and so is adventure with Northwoods and Cedar Glades mountain biking trails.
Loft sleeping spaces with twin beds and pullout sofas work for families in some of the In The Trees options.
Lookout Point Lakeside Inn
All 16 guest rooms at Lookout Point Lakeside Inn overlook Lake Hamilton and exquisitely sculptured gardens. Seems worth the time to study images and descriptions of each room before booking because they have distinct personalities.
Sweet and savory breakfasts are served in the main space, or delivered to rooms. The afternoon hors d’oeuvres I experienced at a reception suggest chef skills at a top notch level.
The boat dock offers access to canoes, kayaks and pedal boats, plus yoga mats. Morning and evening cruises on the 24-foot Lakeside Lady include refreshments, pillow-cushioned seating, a canopy, and, of course, a captain to handle all the details.
Other Not-the-Typical Lodging
Hot Springs might be more fun than some destinations to dig into lodging options because the variety is great. Typical and familiar is possible, but so are roadside motel styles, campgrounds at a gorge, a downtown loft named for Al Capone, complete with a Prohibition-era whiskey delivery hatch in the ceiling.
“Checkin’ Inn” provides video tours on the Visit Hot Springs website.
Getting to Hot Springs, Arkansas
Flying to Hot Springs can involve American, Delta, United and Frontier airlines. Direct flights happen with Allegiant Air and Southern Airways Express also.
Road trippers with a five-hour limit can arrive from Dallas, Shreveport, Tulsa, Memphis and Springfield MO.
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