Hot Springs

Hot Springs National Park lies in Garland County, Arkansas, next to the city of the same name, and covers some 22.5 km². Its history makes it a singular case within the United States park system: on 20 April 1832 President Andrew Jackson signed the act that reserved four sections of land around the springs for future public use, forbidding them to be occupied or appropriated for any other purpose.

It was the first time the federal government had set aside a territory for its natural values, forty years before the creation of Yellowstone in 1872 and seventeen before the Department of the Interior existed. The reservation was established at the request of the territorial legislature of Arkansas, which had been asking for it since 1820. Congress, however, passed no legislation to administer it, so that for decades people went on settling and building businesses over the springs themselves. In 1921 the Hot Springs Reservation was renamed a national park, the eighteenth in the system.

The protected resource is 47 thermal springs that rise on the south-western slope of Hot Springs Mountain at about 61 degrees Celsius. Their origin is geological and not volcanic: rainwater from the Ouachita Mountains seeps in, descends close to two kilometres and takes some 4,400 years to return to the surface. They are the only thermal springs under federal control in the country. The park also preserves Bathhouse Row, the group of historic bathhouses from the era when the city was known as the American Spa, and mature woodland recognised by the Old-Growth Forest Network.