Experience the best of Hot Springs

Hot Springs grew up around geothermal springs on the slope of Hot Springs Mountain in the Ouachita Mountains of central Arkansas. The water emerges at about 62 degrees Celsius, having fallen as rain thousands of years ago, and the federal government set the springs aside in 1832, long before Yellowstone; the area became Hot Springs National Park in 1921.

Bathhouse Row, a line of eight early twentieth-century bathhouses along Central Avenue, includes the Fordyce, restored as the park's visitor centre, and a working bathhouse where visitors still soak in thermal water. Public fountains around town dispense spring water for drinking. A tower on the mountain gives a view over the town, and Lake Hamilton and Lake Ouachita lie to the west, with Garvan Woodland Gardens on the shore.

Southern cooking suits the town, with barbecue, fried catfish and pecan pie, and a long gambling past lingers in the old hotels and a museum of the gangsters who once frequented them. Bill Clinton grew up here. Dogwoods and redbuds bloom in the hills in spring, and the woods turn red and gold in autumn.