Access to Nature, Access to Health: The Government Free Bathhouse at Hot Springs National Park, 1877 to 1922
No Thumbnail Available
Authors
Meeting name
Sponsors
Date
Journal Title
Format
Thesis
Subject
Abstract
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.
Table of Contents
Introduction -- Hot Springs' beginning -- The battle over Ral Hole -- Regulation and the free bathhouse -- Conclusion
DOI
PubMed ID
Degree
M.A. (Master of Arts)