Natchitoches, LA, to Hot Springs, AR (Hwy 90 to New Iberia; I-49 to Texarkana; I-30 to Arkadelphia, AR; Hwy 7 to Hot Springs)
The weather is an increasing concern as it’s clear that the turbulent transition from fall to winter is starting to take place in the center of the country. I decide not to wander around northern Louisiana but rather to start home in a more direct manner so I take the interstate up to Hot Springs. AR, for my next stop.
Hot Springs, AR
Heading north from Natchitoches the countryside becomes more heavily forested and the highway turns and twists around rolling hills and narrow valleys. Hot Springs is located in the southern reaches of the Ozark Mountains (extremely rugged country but not really mountains by western standards.) The first day in Hot Springs ended with torrential rains and a tornado warning but the next day was cooler and calmer. Fall is definitely here and the Lunch Box was nestled in amongst the fallen leaves along a little creek just outside of Hot Springs where we weathered the storm quite well!
Hot Springs is the childhood home of President Bill Clinton but its claim to fame goes back much farther than that. For centuries Native Americans gathered in the valley to enjoy the naturally occurring hot springs. Even today the belief in the medicinal properties of the spring water is widespread and there is a public fountain where spring water is free to the public. It was misty and cold the morning I was there but a continuous line of people came up to the fountain filling various containers with water.
In 1818 the Quapaw Indians ceded the land around the springs to the United States and after Arkansas became a territory in 1819 one of the first acts of the territorial legislature was to request that the springs and surrounding mountains be set aside as a federal reservation. This was the first time that the federal government granted its protection to a specific tract of land and in 1832 the Hot Springs reservation was created by Congress. This was the precursor to the current national park system, though the reservation did not become a national park until 1921. The hot springs were believed to have medicinal value and Hot Springs became a destination resort for people “seeking the waters.” The “hey-day” of the popularity of Hot Springs was in the early 1900’s when not only did people come seeking the health benefits of the waters but also to see spring baseball, as most major leagues held spring training camp in the vicinity. In the 1920’s the hotels and bathhouses became a favorite retreat for wealthy gangsters with Al Capone and his friends favoring the Arlington Hotel as their center of operations. During this time Bathhouse Row came into being. Elegant bathhouses were constructed along the east side of Center Street at the base of the mountain from which the hot springs flow. Today eight of those bath houses are part of the national park and one of them, the Fordyce, is open to visitors. Let’s check out Bathhouse Row.
The Fordyce sits at the center of Bathhouse Row. Built in 1915 it is now the visitor center for Hot Springs National Park and open to the public to tour.
These magnificent buildings were not hotels, but spas where people congregated to “take the waters”, perhaps exercise and get a massage, or sit in the parlor and talk with friends. The cornice above the entrance is solid copper. The lobby is paneled in marble and a national park ranger greets visitors at what would have been the check-in counter for the spa.
Men and women were segregated and the women’s side was not nearly as large or sumptuous as the men’s. A progression of three rooms tells the chronology of a lady’s visit to the spa. First is the soaking room with only seven individual tub rooms, then the “packing room” where ladies could rest and have either hot or cold packs applied to whatever area of the body was ailing, and finally the “cooling room” where one would rest until the body’s temperature had returned to normal. Note the simple décor of this section, including the small size of an individual tub cubicle.
On the other side of the lobby is the entrance to the men’s section. The individual soaking tubs surround an elegant fountain court for lounging under a spectacular stained glass ceiling.
On the second floor the Assembly Parlor runs the width of the entire building overlooking Center Street. Here patrons met to talk with friends, read and play games. While the space is open it was segregated into a ladies side and a gentlemen’s side. Standing in the center I take a picture to the left and right.
Otherwise the second floor houses on the ladies side a beauty parlor and massage room, on the gentlemen’s side was a large dressing room, steam cabinet room and a gymnasium.
There are seven other bathhouses, all on the same side of Center Street, lined up right next to each to each other. The Maurice (1911), Hale (1914), and the Superior (1916)
The Lamar (1923),) Quapaw (1922), and the Ozark (1922)
The National Park Service continues to operate the Buckstaff (1912) so that visitors can still enjoy the spa experience.
Across Center Street from the bathhouses are the buildings originally constructed to offer services to those attending the spas. Today they house restaurants, bars and retail.
The hillsides rise steeply on both sides of Center Street with houses climbing the hills to the west and looming above Bathhouse Row to the east is the old Army-Navy Hospital (1933), now a rehabilitation center for the state of Arkansas.
The canyon where the hot springs emerge is so narrow that the only street running through it is Center Street. The bathhouses are on the east and the retail on the west but north of bathhouse row the canyon opens up a bit and here is where the great hotels were built. The Arlington Hotel was the home base for Al Capone as well as where the major baseball players of the day (Babe Ruth, Lefty Grove, Joe DiMaggio) stayed during spring practice.
The town, now about 35,000 people in size, spreads south from a narrow canyon much like an inverted funnel. In this picture from the top of the west ridge looking southeast, you can barely see the roofs of Bathhouse Row through the trees in the lower left, the old hospital building in the center, and the rest of the town spreading out to the right.
Leaving Hot Springs I head north through the Ozarks to Branson, Mo. This is very rugged country, not because there are high mountains but rather because the low hills are repeatedly cut by deep canyons. There isn’t enough flat ground for any real agriculture to take place and I suspect that the soil is pretty poor as well, since everywhere on cuts for the highway you can see that there is less than a foot of top soil covering a layer of rock throughout the region.
Branson, MO
Branson is in the heart of the extremely rugged Ozark Mountains and is named after Reuben Branson who opened a store and post office in the area in 1882. If you visualize a hand with all fingers extended and rotated to the left 90 degrees you’ll have a good idea of how the town is spread out. Development runs along the top of ridges that are separated by deep ravines with the palm of the hand hard up against Lake Taneycomo, a narrow man-made lake formed by a dam on the Whit River. The small downtown area (the palm of the hand) climbs up steeply from the lake side. A narrow strip along the lake is the home to Branson Landing, a new development that includes a mall, Hilton Hotel, convention center, and at the southern end, the RV Park where Augie and I stayed. This is the view up and down the lake from the front of our site.
The first tourist attraction in the area opened in 1894 when William Lynch started charging admission to enter Marble Cave and in the next one hundred years Branson developed into a major entertainment destination. The small downtown area is jammed with tourists, mostly elderly who emerge from giant buses in droves and cram the small shops.
Branson’s brand is all about being “wholesome” with a heavy emphasis upon the Judeo-Christian side of “wholesomeness”. Highway 76 leads west from the downtown area and for a couple of miles is lined with entertainment options for everyone: museums, thrill rides, dinner shows, theaters. This is Las Vegas without the sin…
Perhaps nothing exemplifies the difference between Las Vegas and Branson more than this marquee in front of the American Bandstand Theater advertising performances by all the great artists listed. Unfortunately none of them are actually appearing (a few are even dead!), performances are all done by impersonators. The closest to the real thing in town (at least while I was there) was Yakov Smirnoff, a comedian from back in the 70’s who has his own theater. Lots of “wholesome” entertainment, just not quite the real thing (for me, at least, but obviously not for a lot of others as the place was crawling with people!)
As I am now into the end of the second week of November I am increasingly aware of the weather up north. A big snow storm was starting to come out of the Rockies and the Branson area was forecasted to have 7 inches of rain two days away so I decided to cut my stay in Branson a day short and make a mad dash for Montana. I left Branson early in the morning and drove 500 miles north to Sioux City, Iowa, in one day in an effort to get on the other side of the storm. That mostly paid off as I missed the bulk of the rain. However, a new challenge appeared in the form of wind. Driving a motorhome in high winds is a chancey endeavor and I prefer to just sit and wait out the wind. Under the best of circumstances driving west across South Dakota is a windy experience and in this case 70 mph winds are in the forecast for the following evening. So again, Augie and I got up early and hit the interstate west to Rapid City where we got settled in just an hour before the wind and cold set in. The third day of challenges arose when the forecast for home (Billings) also now included a wind storm. So, for the third day in a row, we were up and on the road by 6am in order to get to Billings, empty tanks, winterize plumbing lines and get the Lunch Box in its’ winter garage before the storm hit. I am happy to announce that the mission was accomplished. All the necessary tasks were taken care of and Augie and I were safe at home well before the winds hit later that evening. As evidence of how close I cut the timing of the return, here’s the view from my back deck three days later!
And so concludes an epic journey of over 5,400 miles to and from the Big Easy. The late fall gave me reasonable weather for most of the trip, next year I probably won’t gamble and stay out on the road so late into November. Please feel free to send in any comments that you might have about how I might improve the journal, I always like hearing from readers. I continued to be amazed at the number of people who have signed up to follow the blogged (619 at the time of this writing) and am very grateful to all! I will be staying in Billings through the holidays and then, God willing, I plan on hitting the road next February for another adventure. At this time the tentative destination is Arizona, though who knows what I’ll be thinking come next February!
Thanks again for following along on my trip, enjoy the holidays!
Larry
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