Hale’s Hot Cave
In the fall of 1897, a petition from four bathhouse owners protested an unfair privilege granted to Hale Bathhouse where, in the basement’s interior a “hot cave” had been excavated featuring a thermal spring. The petitioners charged the Hale used it “as a drumming service to attract people to the bath house.” All the owners joined the call for the Department of the Interior to withdraw the privilege.
Most Hot Springs physicians said it possessed no advantage over any of the “Hot Rooms” at other bathhouses, and one called the hot cave “dangerous, for the reason that it utterly lacks ventilation.” Inspector J.W. Zerely recommended Interior order it closed and require the Hale to utilize hot rooms similar to its competitors; however, Interior failed to adopt this recommendation, and the hot cave continued in use until the Hale’s lease expired in 1907.
At that time Interior permitted continued use “with the understanding that it should not be advertised in any special way or assertions be made… as to any alleged peculiar properties of the hot air in such cave.” Regular hot rooms at the Hale were very small. Thus, it was believed that the protest was grounded in “competitive jealousy.”
In 1994, the National Park Service maintenance crew, installing a French drain behind the Hale Bathhouse, encountered the “hot cave.” Forerunner of a modern-day sauna, the Hale Bathhouse hot cave was five feet wide, six feet high, and L-shaped. Hot Springs weighed the options of allowing visitors to have access, resealing it, or sealing it behind a transparent door linked to the bathhouse’s foundation with an airtight concrete block seal. Superintendent Giddings decided on the latter option with a door inside the Hale to provide access “on rare occasions” and “to maintain the heat and humidity” of the hot cave. Clay deposits in the wall crevices still show the fingerprints of bathers from decades past.
