Though what was then the Hot Springs Reservation was protected from settlement in the 1830s, settlement and construction occurred near the springs nevertheless. Hot Springs was never occupied by Union troops and largely escaped the violence of the war save for two minor skirmishes that occurred on February 4, 1864. The Confederate state government then returned to Little Rock, relocating to Washington (Hempstead County) the following year when Union troops finally did advance upon and capture Little Rock. From May 6 through July of that year, Hot Springs served as the state capital. In 1862, when Governor Henry Massie Rector feared that Little Rock (Pulaski County) might be captured by Union troops, he relocated the state records to Hot Springs. Many slaves were employed at the hotels of Hot Springs, and even one hotel advertised that its warm baths were available for “invalid Negroes,” who would then be shipped back to their owners after treatment. When the town of Hot Springs incorporated in 1851, it was home to two rows of hotels, along with the bath houses and the usual concomitant businesses, and the city attracted not only seekers of leisure but also numerous invalids hoping to find relief in the area’s thermal waters.īy 1860, the number of slaves in Hot Spring County was 613, just over ten percent of the population total of 5,635. By the early 1830s, the springs were proving a major attraction, and, in 1832, Congress reserved the area now known as Hot Springs National Park for federal use, exempting it from settlement. The site soon attracted regular visitors throughout the spring and summer months, as people sought the reputed beneficial effects of the thermal springs, and, by 1825, there opened the first structure that could be considered a hotel. The first permanent white settler was likely John Perciful in 1809.

The Hunter-Dunbar Expedition up the Ouachita River in 1804 included a four-week study of the hot springs, though the explorers were unable to discover the springs’ water source.

Louisiana Purchase through Early Statehood Spanish explorers of the expedition of Hernando de Soto may have passed through what is now Garland County, but there is no evidence that de Soto himself visited the hot springs. However, there is evidence for early mining of area novaculite, which was used for various tools and spear points. Local legend speaks of the thermal springs as constituting a neutral ground in which various tribes, even those at war with each other, could co-exist in peace, at least temporarily, but these legends are no doubt later embellishments devised as part of an emerging tourist economy. The area around Hot Springs was occupied by Native Americans until about AD 1600 the most recent native inhabitants of the area were likely related to the historic Caddo Indians. Pre-European Exploration through European Exploration and Settlement President Bill Clinton, born in Hope (Hempstead County), grew up in Hot Springs, and the city has attracted and produced many noteworthy politicians, artists, and writers throughout the years, including Mary Lewis and Marjorie Florence Lawrence. The daily newspaper the Sentinel-Record, in one incarnation or another, has been circulating in Hot Springs since its inception in 1874. It is the largest city in the Ouachita Mountains and has been a resort center since its establishment in the early nineteenth century, but it is also known as a historic locus of illegal gambling, mafia activity, and political corruption.

Hot Springs is situated along the Ouachita River in the Central Ouachita Mountains division of the Ouachita Mountains.

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