History
The real history behind the legends
Hot Springs has the best stories in Arkansas, and some of them are even true. The game keeps them sorted with four tags, and I'll use the same ones here.
The tunnels
FACT Hot Springs Creek runs in a stone arch under Central Avenue. The first section was finished in 1884, in front of Bathhouse Row, so bathers no longer had to cross an open creek full of runoff on narrow bridges. The original arch is about 3,500 feet long and was built of granite and novaculite. It cost $136,745. (Encyclopedia of Arkansas; City of Hot Springs; NPS)
FACT The Park Service runs a pipe inside that arch that carries hot spring water to the bathhouses. The city's Stormwater Division maintains the arch, and going inside without permission is against the law. There are no tours.
LEGEND Legend says Capone and friends walked that tunnel unseen, from the Arlington to the gambling clubs. Local historians don't buy it. They call the tunnel damp, dark and dangerous, and point out the gangsters walked around town in the open anyway. No bowling alley or buried gold has ever turned up.
The gangsters
FACT Owney Madden, a New York mobster, settled in Hot Springs in the 1930s, and by 1940 he held a controlling interest in the Southern Club at 250 Central. That building is now the Josephine Tussaud Wax Museum. (Encyclopedia of Arkansas)
FACT In 1936 Lucky Luciano, New York's "Public Enemy No. 1", was hiding out here. A New York detective in town on another case spotted him on Bathhouse Row. Luciano was arrested on April 1. Governor Futrell and Attorney General Carl Bailey forced the issue: about 20 state troopers moved him to Little Rock, and on April 18 he was sent back to New York by train. (Encyclopedia of Arkansas)
CLAIM The Arlington says Al Capone rented its whole fourth floor and stayed in Room 443. The hotel's own history page says so, and the Encyclopedia of Arkansas repeats it. A 2008 AP story said 442.
The fire that didn't reach the 300 block
FACT On September 5, 1913, a fire that started in a house on Church Street burned a huge stretch of the city. About 2,500 people lost their homes, and no one was killed. Firefighters stopped it at the south end of Central, and the 300 to 500 blocks didn't burn. That's why so many of the buildings across from the bathhouses are older than the fire. (Encyclopedia of Arkansas; National Register nomination, 1984)
Where the fiction starts
FICTION Dewey the courier, Pip the newsie, Detective Fitz Mulroy, the Lark in his canary-yellow suit and every room behind every door are my story. The game always tags them that way, right next to the real history, so nobody walks away thinking a made-up room is real.