From Azaleas to Zydeco: My 4,600-Mile Journey through the South

Water, Water Everywhere

Water, Water Everywhere Hot Springs, Arkansas, a small city of about 35,000 people, is about as far west as this Journey goes. Williamsburg and the Atlantic coast are over 1,000 miles away. Indian country, the Oklahoma border, is less than 100 miles away. We’re in the center of America now. The U.S. Census Bureau places America’s population center in southwestern Missouri, a few hundred miles to the north of Hot Springs. Remember Concord, North Carolina, and its sister city Kannapolis, the small towns which are now suburbs of Charlotte? Both places had to restrict their growth because of the lack of water. Hot Springs is the opposite of these two places, hydrologically speaking. Where Concord and Kannapolis have to curtail water usage, Hot Springs has ample water supplies for the foreseeable future. The city has two lakes for its water and two additional lakes in reserve. Yes, Hot Springs has lots of water, more than enough for essential drinking and industrial uses and plenty for boating, fishing, and swimming. Restricting water usage for things like lawn watering or car washing is incomprehensible to the residents of Hot Springs. Besides the public water supplies, water just bubbles up from the ground and people bottle it. The hot springs have always drawn people to this place. For hundreds of years people have come to “take the waters.” As the story goes, these pilgrims made Hot Springs neutral ground. The Native Americans agreed to leave their weapons when they came to bathe in 221 the thermal waters. Gangsters from New York and Chicago made similar agreements. They came to gamble and relax in the bathhouses, not kill each other. Major league spring training began here in 1886 when the Chicago White Stockings, the forerunner of the Cubs, thought it would be helpful if their baseball players kept themselves in shape in the mild Arkansas winters. The players weren’t averse to spring training because they could take the baths between trips to the local horse track or downtown casinos. Old-timers still talk about seeing Babe Ruth hit a ball out of Whittington Park Field and into the tourist-filled alligator farm next door. Until the late 1960s, Hot Springs was a gambling mecca. In the time before Las Vegas, Atlantic City, and the Mississippi River casino boats, gambling in Hot Springs was illegal, but wide open. At the beginning of the Ouachita Mountain range, the mountains around Hot Springs aren’t that tall. The area resembles the Carolina Piedmont. Between Hot Springs Mountain and West Mountain, hot water flows from numerous springs. The Native American tribes called this place “the valley of the vapors” because the escaping hot water created clouds. It’s estimated that the area springs produce almost a million gallons of water a day. It comes to the surface at a temperature of 143 degrees Fahrenheit. From the mid-1500s, the springs were claimed by the French and occupied by Native Americans. The French sold the land to the United States as part of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. While Arkansas was still a territory, the lands around the springs were declared a federal reservation to protect the water and have remained federal property ever since. This federal action gives the Hot Springs National Park the distinction of being America’s oldest and smallest national park. My host for this Hot Springs water expedition was James Breckinridge Speed. For an Arkie, Breck has an interesting lineage. His ancestors came from Kentucky. Joshua Fry Speed was Abraham Lincoln’s best friend. Joshua’s brother, James, served as Lincoln’s attorney general during the war. James was an ardent abolitionist. The Breckinridge in his name comes from another famous Kentucky family whose family tree included America’s youngest vice president, John C. Breckinridge. Vice president under President James Buchanan, Breckinridge was the 222 highest-ranking United States official to become a Rebel. Even though Kentucky did not secede, Breckinridge became a general in the Confederate army and later a cabinet member—secretary of war—in the Confederate States of America. Breck is the president of Mountain Valley Spring Water Company, the oldest continuously operated, single-source spring water operation in America. The company’s pretty headquarters building is located on Central Avenue, the main street of downtown Hot Springs. Breck says that none of his family history helped when he decided to quit practicing...