Hot Springs, known for its naturally heated springs and therapeutic bathhouses, became a major training ground in baseball. A must-have for fans of baseball history. Hot Springs, Arkansas, with its thermal water baths, attracted its first big-league outfit when the National League champion Chicago White Stockings traveled south for spring training in 1886. The baseball colony grew as dozens of other clubs followed. Individual players flocked here as well to hike, golf, and boil out in bathhouse steam cabinets prior to leaving for training camps elsewhere. Nearly half of Cooperstown's Hall of Famers made the pilgrimage to this baseball mecca. Major- and minor-league aggregations, legendary teams, players of the Negro Leagues, and baseball schools for budding players and umpires all come to bat in Images of Sports: Baseball in Hot Springs.

From a hot springs attraction to a central location for gangsters, gambling, moonshine and organized crime, trace the evolution of this "loose buckle in the Bible belt", now a resort and major tourist destination. In the late 1800s, Hot Springs, Arkansas, was a small town with a big attraction: hot thermal water. The federal government took possession of the downtown-area springs, and bathhouse row was born, along with the first property that would be considered a national park. Following not too far behind were great entrepreneurs who brought in gambling and prostitution to go with the area's leading industry: moonshining. By the time the 20th century rolled in, Hot Springs was booming with tourists and became America's first resort. In the early 1930s, former New York gangster Owen Madden took up residence in the spa city, and things became very organized. Gangland luminaries from Al Capone to Frank Costello made regular pilgrimages over the next few decades to what was referred to as "the loose buckle in the Bible Belt."

"The reader of Ray Hanley's new book on Hot Springs will find it both entertaining and informative. Mr. Hanley is to be commended on the accuracy of his research and his writing."---Orval Allbritton, Garland County Historical Society A Place Apart tells the history of Hot Springs, Arkansas, through words and pictures. Throughout that history, the thermal waters bubbling from the Ouachita Mountains ringing the city are a backdrop to the stories of pioneers, wealthy barons, scoundrels, gamblers, colorful politicians, and, of course, the hundreds of thousands of people who come to the spa city for the pleasures and health benefits of the baths. For all those interested in the history of Hot Springs, A Place Apart is a delightful, and essential, resource.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Hot Springs National Park was recognized nationally in 2010 when the U.S. Mint unveiled the design of the first quarter of 56 in a series called the America the Beautiful Quarters Program. In 1903 a Chicago magazine, The 400, told its upscale readers about Hot Springs, Arkansas. The article's author wrote, "I also perceive a Chicago-Hot Springs air line of macadamized highway, lined with meteoric automobiles ribboning off the 750 miles between the cities in a thousand or less minutes. The perspective is almost delirious." Such exuberant words are testimony to what Hot Springs, "a place apart," has been to the nation since the early European explorers found vapors rising from the thermal springs-47 of them from which a million gallons of 143-degree water flow each day. A Place Apart offers readers a balanced history in words and historic photographs of a unique locale in the state of Arkansas. The hot springs of what the Native Americans called Washita were on the national map of Pres. Thomas Jefferson when the United States acquired what would become Arkansas in the Louisiana Purchase of 1804. Congress created the Hot Springs Reservation in 1832-the first land that the federal government set aside for preservation-granting federal protection of the thermal waters, and renamed it Hot Springs National Park in 1921. This book provides a fascinating visual history of pioneers, wealthy barons, scoundrels, gamblers (including such frequent visitors as Al Capone and Lucky Luciano), colorful politicians, and the hundreds of thousands of people who came to the spa city in hopes of regaining their fleeting health. Also covered are such famous attractions as Oaklawn Park, a thoroughbred horse-racing track, and Bathhouse Row, with its eight turn-of-the-century historic buildings.

The undisputed master of the tough thriller, New York Times bestselling author Stephen Hunter delivers an “exciting and intelligent” (The Wall Street Journal) masterpiece set in 1940s Arkansas, where law and corruption ricochet like slugs from a .45 automatic. Earl Swagger is tough as hell. But even tough guys have their secrets. Plagued by the memory of his abusive father, apprehensive about his own impending parenthood, Earl is a decorated ex-Marine of absolute integrity—and overwhelming melancholy. Now he’s about to face his biggest, bloodiest challenge yet. It is the summer of 1946, organized crime’s garish golden age, when American justice seems to have gone to seed for good. Nowhere is this truer than in Hot Springs, Arkansas, the reigning capital of corruption. When the district attorney vows to bring down the mob, Earl is recruited to run the show. As casino raids erupt into nerve-shattering combat amid screaming prostitutes and fleeing johns, the body count mounts—along with the suspense in this “riveting” (Los Angeles Times), “richly told tale” (The San Francisco Examiner).