COLUMNISTS

Pictures of the past

— Ihave always liked Hot Springs and Garland County. I grew up in a small neighboring county, and Hot Springs offered a powerful respite from life in the slow lane. I can recall vividly being at a high school banquet at a Hot Springs hotel in 1965 and stumbling onto a casino as I was searching for a men’s room. The room was situated behind an innocuous and unlabeled door, and no guard was on duty to prevent the entry of a 16-year-old kid.

Hot Springs has been tame since the late 1960s when Gov. Winthrop Rockefeller closed the illegal gambling clubs, but it still remains the capital city of the Ouachita Mountains. Of course, it is the only real city in that land of steep green ridges and the vast Ouachita National Forest.

Hot Springs history is one of my favorite research topics, and the city is a pleasant place to do research. I recently had the opportunity to spend time mining the extensive collections of the Garland County Historical Society headquarters at 328 Quapaw Ave., Hot Springs.

Established in 1960 as a tax-exempt non-profit,the Garland County Historical Society has assembled quite a trove of resources documenting the area’s colorful past. My favorite part of that trove is a collection of 30,000 photographs and negatives. The physical growth of Hot Springs is well documented, with hundreds of pictures of bath houses, grand hotels, eccentric tourist traps, and tourists strolling down Central Avenue.

Central Avenue in its early years bore little resemblance to its modern self. Indeed, Hot Springs Creek flowed freely through town until the 1880s when the creek was covered, creating an arched tunnel with a paved street on top. The creek still flows under Central Avenue, and stories abound of criminals using the tunnel to hide illicit alcohol during Prohibition.

One of my favorite pictures shows gangster Al Capone having a drink at the venerable Happy Hollow Amusement Park. Happy Hollow was the brainchild of Norm McLeod, a Mississippi native who landed in Hot Springs in 1888. At first he worked as a photographer, but soon he added a shooting gallery, souvenir shops, rental carriages, and a large petting zoo. McLeod targeted tourists, and he hit upon the shrewd idea of allowing visitors to enter the park free of charge-with the understanding that visitors would buy products, rent his carts, and most important, have their pictures made for a small fee.

Tourists could choose from a variety of photographic backdrops, one of the most popular being a Wild West theme. In early pictures alive bear was often chained to the stage or the roof of a crude log cabin, but when the bear died McLeod had it stuffed and it continued as a prop even after its fur became thin and moth eaten.

Other unusual tourist attractions, such as alligator and ostrich farms, are documented in the society’s collections.

In addition to its picture collection, the Garland County Historical Society headquarters is home to a research library, vast files of newspaper clippings-indeed a whole collection of Hot Springs newspapers. The society’s large collection of public school yearbooks is widely used by researchers, although the yearbooks from the years when Bill Clinton was a student are kept under tight security because of their financial value.

The oldest original document in the society’s holdings is an 1842 hand-drawn township map. The original Hot Springs city charter, signed by Gov. A.H. Garland when the city was incorporated in 1876, hangs on the society’s walls.

In recent years, the Garland County Historical Society has increased its level of activity. Elizabeth Robbins has been hired as the executive director, which has enabled the group to extend programming into the local schools. Regular office hours allow greater researcher access. The society publishes two newspaper columns monthly, and for more than 50 years the society has issued a large yearly journal known as the Record.

Last year a storm knocked a large oak tree through Historical Society headquarters, narrowly missing the cabinets of historical documents, photographs, and artifacts. This close call sparked the society to undertake a program to make digital copies of its holdings. The society has raised $7,500 of the needed $25,000, and it is working hard to match another grant of $7,500.

Visit the society’s Internet site to see an interesting account of the group’s work: www.garlandcountyhistoricalsociety.com.

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Tom Dillard is an historian and a retired archivist. Email him at tomd@pgtc.com.

Editorial, Pages 78 on 02/24/2013

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