Hot Springs is the oldest federally protected hot springs in the United States; Andrew Jackson reserved the area as the Hot Springs Reservation in 1832, four decades before Yellowstone was set aside as the first national park. The town built itself around the springs, and by the 1920s eight grand bathhouses lined Central Avenue in a strip that is now called Bathhouse Row.
Today only two of the eight operate as bathhouses. Buckstaff has run continuously since 1912 with the same traditional walk-in format: separate floors for men and women, private porcelain tubs filled with thermal water, attendants who scrub and wrap clients, and a cool-down room. Quapaw, two doors down, reopened in 2008 as a modern coed spa with four public thermal pools at staggered temperatures and a contemporary booking system.
The water itself is what the park preserves. Forty-seven springs along Hot Springs Mountain produce roughly 700,000 gallons per day at 143 F. Isotope dating shows the water fell as rain about 4,000 years ago, circulated to roughly 4,500 feet below the surface, heated geothermally, and is now rising back through Paleozoic novaculite. The thermal water fountains on Bathhouse Row are public and free; visitors regularly fill bottles to drink.
Practically, the park is best treated as a downtown soak weekend. The Waters and Arlington Hotel are walking distance to both bathhouses, Superior Bathhouse Brewery on the row brews beer with the thermal water, and Gulpha Gorge campground inside the park offers a cheaper basecamp. Most visitors do Buckstaff and Quapaw both, in that order, on the same day.
