Time Tour

  • TIME TOUR: Lon Warneke

    Most people are lucky to have success in one career, but Lon Warneke shone in several. Warneke’s talents and character took him from a small farm near Mount I…

    by Elizabeth Robbins/Garland County Historical Society September 1, 2021

  • TIME TOUR: Hot Springs' earliest churches

    In 1836, John C. and Sara Hale purchased land along both sides of what is now Bathhouse Row. While John built a bath house and hotel, Sara claimed part of thei…

    by Elizabeth Robbins/Garland County Historical Society August 1, 2021

  • TIME TOUR: Gulpha Gorge Swimming Pool

    Did you know that for many years a swimming lake was a popular summer attraction in Gulpha Gorge Campground?

    by Sharon Shugart, retired National Park Ranger and GCHS volunteer July 1, 2021

  • TIME TOUR: The Opera House

    Where did Hot Springs’ residents and tourists go for arts and entertainment long ago? The best of the early theaters was a hall (with a tin roof) above the fir…

    by Elizabeth Robbins/Garland County Historical Society June 1, 2021

  • TIME TOUR: Hot Springs on the Water

    The creation of lakes Hamilton, Catherine and Ouachita started with the dream of a former Ouachita River steamboat pilot, Flave Carpenter.

    May 1, 2021

  • TIME TOUR: Hot Springs at the Movies

    Hot Springs has enjoyed going to the movies since 1907, when residents saw silent movies at the Whittington Amusement Park Theater. Several theaters soon appea…

    by Elizabeth Robbins April 1, 2021

  • TIME TOUR: Hiram Whittington

    Twenty-one-year-old Massachusetts native Hiram Whittington came to the Arkansas Territory in 1826 to work as a printer for the Arkansas Gazette. In 1832 Hiram …

    by Elizabeth Robbins March 1, 2021

  • TIME TOUR: Black baseball in Hot Springs

    Late in the 19th century, as Jim Crow laws were enacted, Major League teams began to bar participation by Black players, a sad fact that would not change until…

    by Mark Blaeuer February 1, 2021

  • TIME TOUR: The train depot at Transportation Plaza

    By all rights, you should hear ghostly train whistles at Transportation Depot at Market Street and Broadway Terrace. Locomotives pulled into the Iron Mountain …

    by Elizabeth Robbins January 1, 2021

  • TIME TOUR: Glimpses of Christmas

    Singers in gleaming white vestments, holding candles, filed down the winding Hot Springs Mountain trail. On Arlington Lawn they took their places on a stage th…

    by Elizabeth Robbins December 1, 2020

  • TIME TOUR: Owney Madden

    When Owney Madden moved to Hot Springs in 1935, he was one of the most-feared gangsters in the country. At his death in 1965, he was eulogized as a “truly diff…

    by Elizabeth Robbins October 1, 2020

  • TIME TOUR: Hot Springs School District

    The first schools in the Hot Springs area were subscription schools, circa 1845, at Chalybeate Springs and at the lower end of Hot Springs Valley. These closed…

    by Elizabeth Robbins September 1, 2020

  • TIME TOUR: The local drive-ins

    To a lot of people, growing up in Hot Springs wasn’t special because of our famous bath houses or historic buildings. It was special because, on crisp fall nig…

    by Elizabeth Robbins July 31, 2020

  • TIME TOUR: The Ostrich Farm

    “There was a time when Hot Springs always knew where to find a feather to put in its cap,” a reporter once wrote.  That place was the Ostrich Farm,  a source o…

    by Elizabeth Robbins July 1, 2020

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