2010 America the Beautiful Quarters®


2010 America the Beautiful Quarters<sup>®</sup>

Coin Overview

The Hot Springs National Park quarter is the first of 2010 and the first overall in the America the Beautiful Quarters® Program. The coin's reverse (tails side) image depicts the façade of the Hot Springs National Park headquarters building with a fountain in the foreground. The headquarters was built in the Spanish colonial revival style and completed in 1936. The National Park Service emblem is featured to the right of the door. Inscriptions are HOT SPRINGS, ARKANSAS, 2010 and E PLURIBUS UNUM. Design candidates were developed in consultation with representatives of Hot Springs National Park.

HOT SPRINGS Park Overview

Hot Springs was first established as a national site on April 20, 1832, to conserve the water from the 47 springs that emerge from Hot Springs Mountain and to ensure that water was made available for drinking and therapy. It is one of the smallest national parks in the country, but one of the most accessible and unique.

Nicknamed “The American Spa,” people have used the hot spring water in therapeutic baths for more than two hundred years to treat rheumatism and other ailments. The park includes Bathhouse Row, itself a National Historic Landmark District. This grand collection of bathhouses is a beautiful example of late 19th century Gilded Age architecture. One of these buildings, the Fordyce Bathhouse, now serves as the park's visitors center.

Beyond the springs, the park also contains 26 miles of hiking trails, picnic areas and campsites in the surrounding Ouachita Mountain.

Fast Facts

Fast Fact #1

The spring water at Hot Springs National Park becomes heated at a depth of approximately one mile before beginning the journey back to the surface through a fault.

Fast Fact #2

Water emerging from the hot springs in Hot Springs National Park fell as rain 4,400 years ago!

Fast Fact #3

Hot Springs, Arkansas, was the premier baseball spring training site from the 1880s to the 1940s. A number of teams came to soothe their aching muscles at the park’s bathhouses.

Fast Fact #4

Hot Springs Reservation, later designated as Hot Springs National Park, was set aside by Congress in 1832. This makes Hot Springs National Park the oldest unit in the national park system.

Fast Fact #5

Every day about 700,000 gallons of 143°F water flow from the springs into the complex piping and reservoir system that supplies water to the baths and free fountains.

Fast Fact #5

Every day about 700,000 gallons of 143°F water flow from the springs into the complex piping and reservoir system that supplies water to the baths and free fountains.

Fast Fact #6

Hiking is a popular pasttime in the park with a 26-mile network of hiking trails that range from easy walks to challenging, rugged-mountain treks.

Park Links