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Mary Hill
Hot Springs National Park
9781467112857
Regular price $23.99 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%One of America’s first national parks, Hot Springs has welcomed the famous and the infamous, all seeking the healing elements of her waters.
Hot Springs was one of the first areas set aside as a federal land reservation in 1832—predating the first national park at Yellowstone by 40 years. In 1921, it was officially designated a national park. Physically the smallest of the 59 US national parks today, Hot Springs measures just larger than 5,500 acres. Its 47 on-site springs produce more than 700,000 gallons of thermal water per day. From early natives who quarried novaculite found in the surrounding hills to famous politicians, performers, and athletes, people have been coming to these springs for thousands of years to partake in the supposed healing powers of the water. President Franklin Roosevelt, boxer Jack Dempsey, and French opera diva Lily Pons are a few of the visitors who made the trek to the Valley of the Vapors. The history of Hot Springs National Park revolves around people's' interactions with its thermal water.
Ray Hanley
Arkansas Disasters
9781467163552
Regular price $24.99 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%Throughout its history, Arkansas has had numerous disasters, ranging from terrible urban fires to devastating river floods. Before the advent of modern weather radar, freakish tornados could drop out of dark clouds without a warning. Lives and livelihoods were taken, while lifetimes of savings invested in homes and businesses were lost in a day.
The worst fire in Arkansas history wiped out 50 square blocks of Hot Springs in 1913, while others gutted entire blocks of Little Rock. Floods 10 years apart—1927 and 1937—rank as the worst in Arkansas history, putting over one million acres underwater. The deadliest tornado ever in Arkansas struck Judsonia and White County in 1952, only barely eclipsing the death toll of Brinkley in 1909. Sheer heartbreak was evident as people stood helplessly watching the flames, gauging the rise of floodwaters, or surveying the aftermath of a terrible tornado.
Ray Hanley is one of the most published historians in Arkansas, with 22 books in print. Since 1986, he has produced a daily statewide newspaper feature, Arkansas Postcard Past, in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Utilizing historic photographs and postcards, often taken before the fires were out or the floodwaters had receded, he tells the story of the disasters that have befallen his state since the 1890s.
