Hot Springs Arkansas And Its Remarkable Story

It isn’t difficult to work out why this town grew in the place that it did – the clue is in the name Hot Springs, after all. What is fascinating about this attractive little town though is its history, not just its social history but its centuries old geological history too. Unlike most other places centred on hot springs, this one is nothing to do with volcanic activity, there is nothing of the sort around here.

Here, the gushing of seriously hot water from numerous springs in what is now a National Park, is caused by a fascinating chain of events which literally takes millennia to evolve. The rain which falls on the ground here seeps through the topsoil into layer after layer of porous rock, not reaching an impermeable layer until a point some 1.5 miles beneath the surface. When it does so, the water is forced sideways and diagonally downwards to a chamber of limited size, where the continuous feed of water builds up enormous pressure.

This pressure then forces the boiling water upwards through narrow vertical chasms, racing to the surface in double quick time. The speed of this upward journey is such that when the water reaches the surface it has lost little of its heat, hitting the springs at temperatures of 143F/62C, sometimes filling the valley with vapour. But here’s the thing – this process is estimated to take around 4,500 years, meaning that the waters which surface today are rains which fell at the same time the Egyptians were building the Great Pyramids. Isn’t that incredible?!

Historians have established that ancient indigenous tribes knew of the benefits of this pure water, having found evidence of habitation from centuries ago. Hot Springs’ first rise in popularity was though in the mid 19th century as the springs and the hot waters began to garner a reputation for having healing qualities for all manner of ailments. Crude wooden bathhouses and the first of the small town’s hotels began to appear.

By the 1890s that reputation had spread across America, so much so that the Chicago White Stockings baseball team, forerunners to the Chicago Cubs, travelled here for specialist training and health benefits prior to commencement of the regular season. A precedent was set, and through the twentieth century Hot Springs became the major destination for what became known as “spring training”. The custom continues to this day and Hot Springs is privileged every year to see premier teams gearing up for the season. Top baseball stars became regular and eager visitors, the likes of Babe Ruth and Joe di Maggio among them, enjoying the saloon bars and social life as much as the training and the healing waters – in fact, it was in Hot Springs that Babe Ruth hit his record breaking home run of 573 feet and, according to records in town, changed the course of baseball history.

The primitive bathhouses were steadily replaced by more swish, state of the art (for the time) facilities, more and more hotels were added as Hot Springs became a sought after destination for those who could afford to avail themselves of its healing waters. Inevitably such attention brought with it more than just the industries of health and hospitality, and the town began to fill with gambling dens, casinos, saloons and brothels.

Hot Springs memorabilia- note the prostitution licence

Hot Springs soon descended into a lawless town where shoot outs were regular features of daily life and sheriffs bit the dust on several occasions, until the town carried a dual reputation as a place of healing waters but also a crime ridden, dangerous town in the style of the Wild West. In 1935, Hot Springs was to change for ever when a certain Owney Madden walked into town.

Madden is not a name we were familiar with before coming to Hot Springs. An Englishman by birth, Madden is now believed to have been the overlord of the underworld, the boss of gang bosses, the highest ranked member of the mob, through the biggest years of mob rule and gang warfare. Feeling too much pressure from the New York Police, Madden fled to Arkansas where state laws meant that federal agents had no jurisdiction over arrest of criminals and, more specifically, to Hot Springs where the gambling culture provided opportunities for control by the mob. The health benefits of the waters were a mere bonus.

Al Capone in Hot Springs

It wasn’t just those factors that brought Madden here: state governors under the auspices of the notorious Orval Faubus and the local police were known by the underworld to be corrupt. Once here, Madden took over the town: known to be in control of protection rackets, bootlegging, casinos and illegal gambling but also as a genial, philanthropic member of the community. From his new home in the Ouachita mountains, Madden continued to control the mob and organised crime back in New York and in many other major US cities, whilst becoming something of a celebrity on his own manor.

With the top man installed, mobsters and gangsters from around the country gravitated to Hot Springs to seek advice from The Boss, aka The Killer, and also of course to stay on side. The list of inhabitants and regular visitors reads like a Who’s Who of major gangsters. Al Capone took up residence in the Arlington Hotel, John Dillinger, Lucky Luciano, Machine Gun Kelly and Bonnie and Clyde all spent considerable amounts of time here. In fact, Bonnie and Clyde were headed for the refuge of Hot Springs when fate caught up with them and they were gunned down.

These were the times when the mob ran everything. Madden doubled as a boxing promoter, and listed Mae West among his many girlfriends. As well as boxing and baseball stars, mega performers like Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Ella Fitzgerald and Count Basie all performed in this little town, all allegedly at the behest of the mob.

What days those 1930s and 1940s must have been – imagine walking down Central Avenue and rubbing shoulders with baseball stars and world champion boxers, the most famous performers like Sinatra and Ellington and the USA’s most notorious and powerful gangsters strolling in the sun or spending time in a bathhouse. It must have felt like the centre of the universe – or at least a certain type of universe.

In 1966, Winthrop Rockefeller was appointed Governor of Arkansas, on a wave of reform backed by supporters determined to rid the town of its mob status and gangster reputation. His appointed detective, one Lynn Davis, took on what was surely a daunting and dangerous task, first aiming to seize gambling machines rather than targeting the arrest of known gangsters. Confiscating all such equipment and handing it over to the local Police, Davis noted the serial numbers and secretly marked the machines, confident that they would be back in the hands of the mob within days.

He was right, and with those moves was able to prove beyond doubt that the local Police were corrupt and under the control of the mob. It was the end of an era, the successors to Capone and Madden were arrested and the entire Hot Springs network of organised crime collapsed like a pack of its own cards.

The dark history of Hot Springs

So too, though, did the town’s economy. As criminality left town, so did the money. Hot Springs fell into ruin, the bathhouses deteriorated, and this raucous, lawless place under mob control became a ghost town  – a situation which endured, remarkably, until just a few years ago. Only since 2015 has there been a resurgence in interest in the hot spring waters and the true attractions of a genuinely unusual natural phenomenon, and the bathhouses which are all active again in the style of a spa destination. Hot Springs lives again, reborn.

The town now loves its dark history. Sleazy clubs and Speak Easy’s have been restored and reopened in their original style and plaques and monuments around town tell its amazing story. A statue of Al Capone sits contentedly outside the Ohio Club which he so loved. Best of all, the Gangster Museum Of America, with its superb exhibits and expert and informative guides, brings the whole incredible story to life. It’s nothing short of astonishing that such a small, remote mountain town can hide such radical, intriguing histories.

FOOTNOTE #1: This amazing story was, we felt, so worth telling that it’s become such a long post that it’s filled the space on its own. Our other experiences in Hot Springs will be in our next article.

FOOTNOTE #2:  And all the while, studiously listening at lessons in Hot Springs High School and learning the saxophone from local teachers, was a young man named Bill Clinton. As if the history of Hot Springs wasn’t already illustrious enough, a local boy from the Ouachita mountains is to go on to become President. 

What an astounding little town.