ARK2. F. Whitton, although unlabeled. Ral City, Arkansas. The following information was provided by an Arkansas historian: "Ral City," was an encampment interspersed among the thermal springs on the west side of Hot Springs Mountain. After the Civil War, indigent people (many of them war veterans) began coming to Hot Springs seeking cures for everything from syphilis to paralysis. They dug three pools on the side of the mountain to catch and hold the spring water. Unable to afford lodging, they put up shanties and tents to live in while they took the baths, and At its height, the
settlement probably had as many as three hundred people in it. In 1877 the first resident superintendent, Gen. Benjamin F. Kelley, was charged with
the task of ridding the springs of this population, so he tore down the structures around the dugout pools, which brought on threats of mob violence, prompting him to call in federal troops from Little Rock to restore the peace. A catastrophic fire in 1878 helped him clear the mountainside of illicit housing. He established free bathing for the indigent at "Mud Hole," one of the dugout pools. This later became the site of a large brick Government Free Bathhouse. In one of the 1877 survey notebooks used when the Hot Springs Commission was redrawing park boundaries, the surveyor created a plat map locating every tent and shanty then on the mountain. VG. $65
