Hot Springs and Blacks

How African Americans Shaped the National Park

A promenade along Bathhouse Row in Hot Springs, Arkansas.

Hot Springs, Arkansas, is a resort city that sits inside Hot Springs National Park in the Ouachita Mountains. Throughout its history, Hot Spring hosted thoroughbred horse racing—before betting on such races was outlawed—and was the site of choice for spring training for several major league baseball teams. Hot Springs was also rife with political and police corruption and frequented by infamous mobsters like Lucky Luciano, Frank Costello, Al Capone, and Bugs Moran. Despite its dark history, Hot Springs emerged as a world-class spa resort.

Officials named the park for the thermal waters that flow from underground springs. Roughly 700,000 gallons of mineral water averaging 143 °F (62 °C) are collected daily for drinking and use in public bathhouses. In April 1832, Hot Springs became the oldest national park in U.S. history when President Andrew Jackson signed a law to reserve the springs for federal use. But because Congress did not take steps to legislate administration for the Reservation—as it was then known—people were free to settle in the city and build homes and businesses around the springs.

Ramshackle hotels, bathhouses, and other businesses quickly sprang up, and visitors began to flock to the city for leisure and the benefits of the mineral-rich waters. Enslaved blacks, who made up more than ten percent of the nearly 6,000 residents of Hot Springs in 1860, served in the hotels and bathhouses. It wasn’t until the 1870s that revitalization occurred, and luxurious Victorian buildings replaced the shoddy downtown structures, such as Arlington Hotel, a lavish affair spearheaded by railroad executive Samuel W. Fordyce. A new railroad connection also aided in bringing visitors from across the nation to Hot Springs that decade.

Hot Springs evolved into a health resort, and the city welcomed an opera house, a street railway, a municipal utility system, more upscale hotels and bathhouses, and a country club. Each project saw investment by Samuel Fordyce, a Civil War veteran who traveled to Hot Springs in 1873 to seek a cure for his lingering war-related health issues. The thermal spring waters proved so effective Fordyce relocated to the spa city with his family in 1876. During the post-Reconstruction era, black Americans continued to work in the city’s bathhouses but could not use them due to Jim Crow segregation laws. That led to black-owned bathhouses, beginning with architect John McCaslin’s Crystal Bathhouse in 1904.

The Woodmen of the Union building.

The Crystal Bathhouse, located on Malvern Avenue in the Hot Springs black business district, received new managers in 1908 and burned to the ground in 1913. The Pythian Bathhouse and Sanitarium—designed by architect W. T. Bailey, a Tuskegee Institute department head—rose in its place the next year and offered blacks a luxurious bathing experience. In 1922, Bailey designed a second bathhouse exclusive to blacks. Dubbed the Woodmen of the Union, after the insurance company that financed the project, the complex served as a first-class hotel and featured a 2000-seat theater. It also had a meeting auditorium capable of accommodating 600 guests and included a print shop, beauty parlor, gymnasium, and newsstand.

Despite having exclusive bathhouses to frequent, blacks continued to serve as the primary labor force for all bathhouses in Hot Springs, regardless of ownership or the ethnicity of guests. Samuel Fordyce opened an eponymous bathhouse in 1915, which primarily employed blacks and now houses the Hot Springs National Park Visitor Center. Before Jim Crow laws segregated the country, blacks had access to bathhouses enjoyed by whites, even the wealthy who came to Hot Springs for the curative thermal waters. By 1915, when the Fordyce Bathhouse opened for business, things were different in the spa town.

Blacks could no longer bathe in the establishments on Bathhouse Row, though they were the largest contingent of the Hot Springs workforce. Employers required black spa attendants to work under strenuous conditions surrounded by hot steam for prolonged periods. They attempted to mitigate the displeasure through compensation. While the typical white female employee might earn $7 per week in 1915, a black Fordyce spa attendant, such as Katherine Fagan Tate, received $10 per week and up to $20 when an overflow of bathers required assistance.

Blacks could no longer bathe in the establishments on Bathhouse Row, though they were the largest contingent of the Hot Springs workforce.

Katherine Tate—who went by Katie—was born in El Dorado, Arkansas, in 1863. She moved to Hot Springs in 1897 with her husband George to find work. Katie became a housemaid before transitioning to bathhouses on the row. She joined the Fordyce staff the year it opened, and though the spa epitomized opulence, Katie continued to endure the racial prejudice of the era. The rules restricted her to eating lunch in the Fordyce basement when she had no customers. On the journey home after work, Katie also had to ride at the back of the streetcar by law. If the back was too crowded with other blacks, she had to walk home, even if empty seats and standing room were available in the front.

Portrait of Dr. Timothy L. Bottoms.

In the early 1900s, the federal government released new rules and regulations to govern bath attendants working in the bathhouses. These included specific duties. Attendants were to launder robes, rub mercury ointments on bathers, clean bathing areas, and assist invalids. Cleaning supplies also had to be furnished at their expense. Then there were pack attendants, who wrapped customers in four hot towels (or packs) that had been soaked in thermal spring water and wrung dry. Pack attendants were required to serve drinking water to customers. The government relaxed many of these rules in 1914.

In addition to black massage therapists and bath and pack attendants, the bathhouses also employed chiropodists or foot specialists. One such medical professional was Dr. Timothy Leroy Bottoms. Born in Monticello, Arkansas, in 1917, the Bottoms family later moved to Hot Springs, where Timothy attended Langston High School. He graduated in 1939 and joined the U.S. Army. Timothy served in Africa, Italy, Germany, and France during World War II.

After completing his tour, Timothy returned to the U.S. and studied pre-medicine at Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri. Then in 1956, he attended the Illinois College of Podiatry and Foot Surgery. By 1957, he was a chiropodist at the Fordyce Bathhouse. A National Parks Service exhibit write-up states:

A few years later he opened an office at 413 Malvern Avenue in the African American business district. Former clients relate that Dr. Bottoms would often sing as he worked on their feet. He remained in Hot Springs until his retirement in 1980.”

Nearly one hundred years after ramshackle buildings lined Bathhouse Row, Hot Springs declined in the 1960s. Decades-old bathhouses began to close one after the other, starting with the Fordyce, which shuttered in 1962. Two years later, the Civil Rights Act ended the legal segregation of public places, allowing the blacks who served as the city’s backbone to patronize businesses freely. But by 1985, only one bathhouse was still operating: the Buckstaff. Since it opened its doors in 1912, the Buckstaff remained constant, maintaining traditional bathing methods to the present day. 

On November 13, 1974, Bathhouse Row earned a spot on the National Register of Historic Places. At the close of the next decade, the National Park Service began restoring the vacant spas along Central Avenue. Once the most elegant of all the bathhouses, the Fordyce reentered service as a museum and visitor center in 1989. Hot Springs National Park consists of 5,550 acres, and the park hosts over one million visitors each year.

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