This morning we started the day checking out Hot Springs National Park. This Park is different from the other National Parks. In talking with a park ranger we learned that Hot Springs could have been the first National Park. It was established as a protected area years before Yellowstone National Park was created. Yellowstone is the first established National Park. People flocked to the Hot Springs area for the health benefits of the springs.
The main drag area of the park is lined with bath houses. Some have been turned into other things and some have been restored and are still bath houses.
From the museum this is what the inside of the old bath houses looked like.
A soap shop across the street still had some eclipse candles. And I loved the Hot Southern Mess soap scrub.
I saw a cupcake shop that I thought sounded familiar because I thought I remembered them from Cupcake Wars. The name of the shop was Fat Bottomed Girls Cupcakes.
We left Hot Springs and headed west to Fort Smith. Fort Smith was the last frontier for law and order. It was built in 1817 to keep the peace between between the Osage and Cherokee Indians. One of the sheriffs that roamed the territory was Bass Reeves. The Taylor Sheridan miniseries is Bass Reeves is based on this person. I need to watch this series now.
Judge Isaac Parker was the Federal Judge presiding over this area. He heard over 13,000 cases. You can see in one of the pictures above that prisoners slept on that rock floor with only a blanket. I don’t think they would get away with that now.
This flag has 37 stars to represent the number of states in the union at that time.
Here are some of the buildings in the fort. The enlisted barracks burned many years ago.
This was Belle Starr’s “Social Club”. I need to watch the Cheyenne Social club again, I really like that movie. We didn’t get to go inside it had closed for the day.
An unexpected surprise this afternoon. We were driving around and we saw this unusual building in the distance so we were going to drive by it to see it.
We discovered it was the US Marshall’s Museum. We stopped but they were closing in 30 minutes so we didn’t have time to go through but we stopped and went inside. It looks like it would be a great museum and we will come back to spend time there.
Some odds and ends from today.
We are now in Tulsa with family watching the weather to see if it is going to be stormy here.
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