Hot Springs National Park Trivia
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43 free Hot Springs National Park trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Hot Springs National Park trivia quiz covers the small Arkansas park that wraps around a spa town, where 143-degree water rises from Hot Springs Mountain and Congress set aside the first federal reservation in 1832, forty years before Yellowstone. Questions cover the geology of the springs (no volcano involved), the eight bathhouses of Bathhouse Row from the palatial Fordyce to the Superior brewery, the bathing regimens of the Gilded Age, the free baths for the poor and the Army and Navy Hospital. The town's colourful history is here too: Hernando de Soto in the Valley of the Vapors, the Quapaw treaty, the 1878 and 1913 fires, Major League Baseball's spring training and Babe Ruth's home run into an alligator farm, the gangsters and gambling of the Prohibition years, and the park's 2010 quarter. Difficulty runs from easy to expert and is marked on every question, so it works for a stroll along the Grand Promenade or a serious park-nerd challenge. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia and each question carries its citation. If you enjoy it, try our US National Parks quiz next.
30 of 43 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Hot Springs National Park is in which US state?
Arkansas
Arkansas was still a territory when its legislature asked Congress, in 1820, to set the springs aside for public use; Congress acted twelve years later.
Q 02Which president signed the 1832 law protecting Hot Springs?
Andrew Jackson
Andrew Jackson signed it on April 20, 1832, but Congress gave no one the job of managing the land, so settlers went on building businesses right over the springs.
Q 03Before becoming a national park in 1921, Hot Springs was a federal what?
Reservation
Reservation: in 1832 Congress 'reserved' four sections of land around the springs for the United States, and the word stuck as the site's name for 89 years.
Q 04Until Gateway Arch was redesignated in 2018, Hot Springs held what distinction among national parks?
Smallest by area
Smallest by area: the park guards only the springs and the wooded slopes that feed them, about 5,500 acres pressed against a city, yet the St. Louis arch grounds are smaller still.
Q 05Why did Hot Springs get the first America the Beautiful quarter in 2010?
It was set aside earliest
It was set aside earliest: the Mint issued the coins in the order their sites first gained federal protection, and the springs' 1832 law is four decades older than Yellowstone.
Q 06Hot Springs Mountain rises south of the Ozarks, in which separate range?
Ouachita Mountains
The Ouachita Mountains were buckled into tight folds when tectonic plates collided, and the cracks left behind are the channels the spring water travels through.
Q 07Which rock, quarried on the ridges around Hot Springs for thousands of years, is prized for sharpening knives?
Novaculite
Novaculite, a dense rock of tiny quartz crystals, drew American Indians to these ridges for tool and weapon stone, and it is still cut into whetstones today.
Q 08Where does the heat in Hot Springs' thermal water come from?
Rocks warming naturally with depth
Rocks warming naturally with depth do the work: rain sinks more than 4,500 feet, heats up, then rises fast along faults to emerge at about 143 °F, with chemistry showing it never neared magma.
Q 09Radiocarbon dating shows that Hot Springs' thermal water fell as rain roughly how long ago?
4,400 years
4,400 years is the water's carbon-dated age, so what emerges today fell as rain around the time Egypt's pyramids were going up, then spent millennia creeping down through rock.
Q 10What is the display spring that spills down a bluff on Arlington Lawn called?
Hot Water Cascade
The Hot Water Cascade lets thermal water run in the open, a rarity here because the springs themselves were walled up and covered by 1901 to protect them.
Q 11By tradition, what did Native American tribes call the site of today's Hot Springs?
Valley of the Vapors
Valley of the Vapors is the name tradition hands down, along with a legend that even warring tribes laid down their weapons there to share the springs in peace.
Q 12After ceding the springs by treaty in 1818, the Quapaw were removed in the 1830s to where?
Indian Territory
Indian Territory, in today's northeastern Oklahoma, was their assigned home under an 1833 treaty, after a first forced move to the Red River ended in floods and hunger that drove them back.
Q 13Which president sent William Dunbar and George Hunter to explore the springs in 1804?
Thomas Jefferson
Q 21Bathhouse Row's Hale, rebuilt in 1892-93, opened in 2019 as what?
A nine-room hotel
A nine-room hotel opened in the row's oldest surviving bathhouse, which had stood mostly empty since a 1981 bid to run it as a theatre and arcade folded within nine months.
Q 22After its bathing days ended in 1977, Bathhouse Row's Ozark reopened in the 2010s as what?
An arts and events center
An arts and events center, the park's Cultural Center, filled the Ozark with galleries where artists from the park's residency programme hung their work.
Q 23Bathhouse Row was designated what in 1987?
National Historic Landmark
Thomas Jefferson wanted his newly bought western lands explored, so the pair reached the springs in December 1804 and spent a month measuring the water's heat and noting empty cabins.
Q 14The Maurice Bathhouse's 1931 therapy pool was built to treat what?
Paralysis
Paralysis: the Maurice, one of the row's eight bathhouses, added the pool, inspired by the treatments Franklin D. Roosevelt received at Warm Springs, Georgia.
Q 15Which bathhouse reopened as Hot Springs National Park's visitor center in 1989?
Fordyce
The Fordyce was the first bathhouse on the row to go out of business, in 1962, and citizens campaigning to save the vacant buildings made rescuing it their priority.
Q 16As of 2025, which two Bathhouse Row buildings still operate as bathhouses?
Buckstaff and Quapaw
Buckstaff and Quapaw: the Buckstaff has never stopped running baths since 1912, while the Quapaw sat vacant from 1984 until it was leased out and reopened as a family spa in 2008.
Q 17The colonel who built Bathhouse Row's costliest bathhouse in 1915 had made his fortune in which industry?
Railroads
Railroads made him rich, and he spent more than $212,000 on the bathhouse as a monument to the waters he believed had restored his health after his Civil War service.
Q 18Besides baths, the row's grandest bathhouse offered its patrons which recreational facilities?
Bowling lanes and a billiard room
Bowling lanes and a billiard room: the two basement lanes were the only ones on the row, part of the luxury that drew its wealthier clientele.
Q 19The Superior, the northernmost bathhouse, reopened in the 2010s as what?
A brewery and restaurant
A brewery and restaurant moved into the Superior, once the smallest and cheapest house on the row, and it makes its beer with the park's thermal spring water.
Q 20The Quapaw bathhouse, built in 1922, is topped by what distinctive feature?
A dome of coloured tiles
A dome of coloured tiles crowns a building that sprawls across the footprint of two earlier bathhouses, the Horseshoe and the Magnesia, which its owners replaced with one.
National Historic Landmark status saved the buildings but not their trade: it came two years after another closure had left just one bathhouse on the row still giving baths.
Q 24The brick-paved walkway on the hillside behind Bathhouse Row is called what?
Grand Promenade
The Grand Promenade took decades to finish after grading began in 1933, and a whole bathhouse, the Imperial, was razed to make way for its entrance.
Q 25What did the government do to Hot Springs Creek in the 1880s?
Buried it in a stone arch tunnel
Buried it in a stone arch tunnel: bathers had crossed the open creek on narrow bridges, and covering it cut contamination and made room for today's Central Avenue above.
Q 26Congress opened a free Hot Springs bathhouse in 1878 for which bathers?
The poor
The poor were promised free baths by Congress, and when demand dwindled in the 1950s the government closed the free house and paid commercial bathhouses to treat them instead.
Q 27Which federal department ran the Army and Navy General Hospital behind Bathhouse Row?
War Department
The War Department opened it in 1887, and the military kept it until 1960, when it passed to the state and spent six decades as a rehabilitation centre and career school.
Q 28Which gangster famously favoured the Arlington Hotel in Hot Springs?
Al Capone
Al Capone regularly booked the Arlington's whole fourth floor for himself and his men, drawn like other mobsters to a town where illegal casinos ran in the open.
Q 29Hot Springs is often called the birthplace of what baseball tradition?
Spring training
Spring training is traced to 1886, when one big-league club's president sent his players here to get fit in warm weather and take the baths; after their winning year, other clubs followed.
Q 30The Chicago club that first brought big-league baseball to Hot Springs in 1886 is which team today?
Chicago Cubs
The Chicago Cubs, then called the White Stockings, came under player-manager Cap Anson; the White Sox name belongs to a separate American League club founded in 1901.