Access to Nature, Access to Health: The Government Free Bathhouse at Hot Springs National Park, 1877 to 1922

Scholars of environmental history have written extensively about the role of federal control of public lands. In the past few decades, others have begun to explore connections between the natural environment and health. Largely overlooked, however, is the ways these ideas have merged. This essay demonstrates the interplay in these issues in a prototypical public land reserve, Hot Springs Reservation (later Hot Springs National Park) in Arkansas. Originally protected so that its healing waters would be available to all, Hot Springs grew into a resort destination, and federal officials, residents, and bathers wrestled over competing claims of tourism, politics, and health. This paper draws on government reports, newspaper coverage, tourism publications, and correspondence from Hot Springs stakeholders to follow the shifting role of the Government Free Bathhouse in Hot Springs from 1877 through 1922. It uncovers the ways that changing perceptions about access to the waters in Hot Springs reflected changing priorities about environmental use, social responsibility, and health policy. Although nineteenth-century beliefs about the connection between bodily health and natural environments allowed lower-class users of the waters to stake a claim for continued access in the face of changing social contexts, their access took place within increasingly limited confines, resulting in an unequal distribution of the benefit of the waters.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.A. (Master of Arts)

Level thesis:degree_level

Masters

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

History (UMKC)

Grantor dc:publisher

University of Missouri -- Kansas City

Year dc:date.issued

2019

Author dc:creator

• Carpenter, Kathryn Blair

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Frehner, Brian

Language dc:language.iso

en_US

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/10355/68857

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:mospace.umsystem.edu:10355/68857