Hanging Out in Hot Springs, Arkansas

When tornadoes and generational flooding force you to amend travel plans and you happen to be near Hot Springs, Arkansas, you turn your detour into a tourist adventure.

(Here’s Pearl, unhooked.

after our lake side site was flooded out. Thank you, Farmer John!  His real name)

Hot Springs has quite the history.

Before Las Vegas bloomed miraculously from the mob funded desert of Nevada, Hot Springs was already enjoying its reputation as a center of vice and wild times.

Between the 1920’s and 1040’s, but particularly throughout the 1930’s, Hot Springs flourished as a destination for gambling, bootlegging, and prostitution, packaged as a luxury resort for “taking the baths.”

And indeed, one could very much enjoy the therapeutic benefits of the famous thermal waters, flowing at 147 degrees into the areas 47 thermal springs.

Originally a neutral healing and gathering center for the  Caddo, Osage, Chocktaw, and Quapaw peoples who inhabited the land for generations

before the Indian Removal Act forced them to relocate to Oklahoma and other questionable locations, Europeans wasted no time developing and capitalizing on the wondrous natural water.

Bathhouses were erected quickly in the early 1800’s out of timber and canvas. These were soon replaced with elegant Victorian wooden structures to accommodate the thousands of people coming from all over the world to America’s Sanitarium,  where it was said that treatments in the springs were a cure for tuberculosis, syphilis, rheumatism, polio, and arthritis.

These elegant Victorian bath houses were prone to fire, however, so by the late 1880’s, even more elaborate structures of marble, fire resistant brick and stucco were erected

. Many with ornate stained glass ceilings and windows and shiny brass fixtures which discolored rapidly in the mineral rich water.

By 1923, stately bathhouses lined the main street of Hot Springs, creating Bathhouse Row,

which still exists today,

though only three of the original bath houses still operate.

Over the years, Al Capone, Lucky Luciano, Bugsy Siegel, prize fighter Jack Dempsey, and many members of the mob came regularly to enjoy the highlife Hot Springs offered, though gambling was technically illegal.

The citizens of Hot Springs benefitted from all that spending so looked the other way until in the 1950’s, the FBI got serious about taking down organized crime.

Performing artists were also fond of the place: Sarah Barnhardt, Bessie Smith, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, Liberace, and in the 1960’s and 70’s, the Smothers Brothers, were all frequent performers. Mae West came often to visit her lover, Irish gangster Owen Madden, the long time big boss of Hot Springs, who also helped finance the carees of George Raft, another frequent visitor.

Tony Bennett even first sang his big hit, “I left My Heart in San Francisco” for the very first time late one night in an empty club. The bartender, his friend, is rumored to have said, “I’d buy that song.”

Buckstaff Bathhouse

With such a rich  history, I decided to take my treatment at the historic Buckstaff, the longest contiually operating bathhouse on bathhouse row.

Others have been modernized, with one even turned into a brewpub (Superior Baths, I’m looking at you), but the Buckstaff still uses the same porcelain tubs and sitz baths, and metal steam boxes, they’ve always used. It seemed the right place to “take the water.”

I paid my $45, was led to a changing room, given a key to lock up my clothing and valuables.  After I stripped naked, a bath attendant stood behind me to wrap me up Roman style in a loose cotton drapery.

She led me to my bath,

a gorgeous old porcelain tub which has hosted who knows who over the years.  I stepped out of my wrap and into the water, a pleasant, not too hot, inviting temperature.  Within minutes, my aches began melting away.

After 25 minutes, of which the final ten employed the whirlpool, an ancient mix-master type appendage blowing air into the water (loudly) to create bubbles, my young bath attendant reappeared, wrapped me back up, led me to a room with massage tables.

I crawled up on my table and she wrapped me in hot HOT towels,

placing a cold one around my face. I was very grateful for that cold towel.

15 minutes of this were followed by 15 minutes of sitting in a steam box, sweating out a river of toxins,

then finally, a ten minute sitz bath.

I am not a fan of the sitz bath. I’m sure it’s great for hemorrhoids and such but I found sitting in it with my feet up on a stool  anti-climatic.

I knew in advance not to pay for the massage package because one of the masseuses had told me they only get 20 minutes per client and she felt “kind of bad” about even calling it a massage.

The Hot Springs Mountain Tower

In 1877, local timber baron Enoch Woolman built an 80-foot tall wooden observation tower so  the newly arriving tourist community could enjoy the view of the surrounding area.

It proved very popular.  In 1890, it was struck by lightening and burned down.

In 1905, Charles Rix, President of Arkansas Bank built a second tower, this one 165-foot tall, made of steel,  on the same site. He named it modestly after himself: Rix Tower.

Rix Tower boasted  the addition of an Otis elevator, making it accessible to many who couldn’t, or didn’t want to,  negotiate the stairs. He made a lot of money over the years but neglected to put any of it into ongoing maintenance. His tower eventually became so unstable the Park Department demolished it in 1969.

In March, 1982, a third version of the tower, at 216-feet, was designed by Civil Engineer Don Beavers after more than 10 years of planning and fund raising.

This current tower has two elevators, a museum, and a gift shop on the observation deck. Since opening, it has welcomed more than 5 million visitors who enjoy a full 360=degree view of Hot Springs National Park, as well as the Ouachita Mountains. The tower is now operated by the National Park Service, with revenues going toward maintenance and upkeep of the park.

I decided to swell that five million–and do my bit for maintenance and upkeep–by taking the elevator in the tower to the top.

Looking east  from the observation deck

The town of Hot Springs from the top

I chose to do this as part one of a sight seeing day which took me throughout the entire park, up and down Old Town, deep into the rich neiighborhood of TriVista (where a police car followed me for two blocks before losing interest), then all the way to Arkadelphia, some 40 miles away, which I’d read about in a tourist brochure but after visiting, wasn’t quite sure why.Downtown Arkadelphia

 

Digging for Crystals in Jessieville 

There are two places in the world which scientists say grow the finest quality quartz crystals: Brazil and the Ouachita Mountains of Arkansas.

I don’t plan to travel to Brazil any time soon but here I am, less than an hour from one of the most famous crystal digs in the world, Ron Coleman Crystal Mine, so I decide to go.

 For $20, I, as a senior, buy a one-day permit to dig in the four-acre tailings piles, keeping any crystals I find as long as I can carry them out on my own. That’s the rule. Hand digging only, Small shovels and garden prongs allowed. No pick axes or mechanical devices allowed.

It turns into a perfect day for digging.  Overcast. The temperature not predicted to climb above 80

I studied up enough in advance to know to bring leather gloves,

a bucket to carry my crystals, and a plastic garbage bag to sit on.

The soil is red and rocky so I wear good boots and a hat, slather on the sunscreen, clamber upward  through the tailings,

head into the pile,

find a section that appeals, and begin digging.

I learn fairly quickly that by moving the bigger boulders and rocks aside,

I uncover areas of moist, red, sticky clay.

This clay  often leads to crystals covered over by the soil. After a while, one begins to look for veins of white quartz threading through that clay.        

When one is lucky, those veins yield crystal clear points or clusters, the Grail of crystal diggers everywhere.

The first tailing pile I dig in yields nothing. Well, nothing but the kind of lovely white quartz rocks I’d pick up in Oregon and bring home if I were lucky enough to find them. But you have to walk away because remember, you can only take what you can carry.

I follow a dump truck bringing in a new load, maybe 150 cubic feet of fresh earth. 

About ten other people, three of whom turn out to be loud, constantly complaining kids, have the same idea.

We each stake out a little area on the pile and begin digging. Within minutes I pull out some nice milky quartz crystal points. None of the clear stuff.

I might have stayed with that pile but two of those boys keep whining about how hard it is, how they want bigger crystals than they’re finding. One of them starts digging recklessly right above me, tossing down his cast off rocks. I fear one might bounce off my head. His mother is way off somewhere enjoying her solitude and the father is useless. I move on.

I find another fresh dump, still moist. A much smaller pile with about seven people already at work.

“Do you mind if I join you on this pile?” I ask, mindful of some unspoken rule.

I think about old gold claims where miners shot each another for getting too close.

“Not at all,” says one of the women. It is, in fact, an all-woman pile.

We have a great time digging together, celebrating one another’s finds, laughing over the disappointments when that hunk of sticky red clay we painstakingly pull apart turns out to be nothing but a hunk of sticky red clay. A couple say they return every year to dig and always take home some real finds.

Three hours later, I have a bucket full. Which is enough for me.

The thing is, so many crystals are encased in that red clay—especially the rare clusters. This makes the bucket heavy.

Single points often are just covered in dirt. Some of the tiny ones even lay fully exposed, waiting to be made into necklaces, bracelets, what have you.

The seasoned diggers tell me to take them home, rinse them off with water to get off the main hunks of mud and dirt, but say I will need to use a dilute oxalic acid wash to get rid of the stains in order to bring them to their pure white or clear state.

This is what they look like before washing.

Here is my modest collection in the bucket after a fourth pure water wash. Down underneath that big white cluster are several points and just nice crystals.

I’ll do the oxalic cleanse when I get back to Portland. Maybe.

Here’s a nice little cluster

and some points

I

It was really fun digging in that dirt all morning like a child  (not a whiny one). Therapeutic. Healing.

Happy.

And surrounded by all that crystal energy!

This one is 4 feet tall!  

                                                   

My detour gave me a pilgrim gift: the earth, faceted and marvelous