Hot Springs National Park employees (from left to right) Edgar Payton, Roberta Jackson (Gibson), James Marler, Thelma Guinn, and Sherman Sword at the Government Free Bathhouse, March 1957
Hot Springs National Park Archives
Witnessing the End of an Era
Roberta Gibson was as much an institution in Hot Springs National Park’s bathing industry as the Government Free Bathhouse where she worked for decades. When the newest Government Free Bathhouse opened in Hot Springs in 1921, National Park Service Director Stephen Mather, as well as the governors of Arkansas and Oklahoma attended the dedication of “one of the handsomest bathhouses in the city,” according to a local newspaper. When the building closed in 1957, the Government Free Bathhouse had offered over 3.6 million recorded baths to the national park’s poorest visitors who could not afford to use the more elegant pay bathhouses in town.
Gibson began her work as a bath attendant at the Government Free Bathhouse in the 1930s. She worked alongside other dedicated public health servants who similarly spent decades working for the national park. In her 20+ years on the job, Ms. Gibson witnessed the changes taking place in the bathing industry. She helped the nation’s poor during the Great Depression to the post-World-War-II period where she and hundreds of bath attendants helped bathe the most visitors Hot Springs National Park ever saw in 1946-47. She also worked as fewer patients and patrons used the bathhouses for medicinal reasons in the 1950s. Ultimately, on March 22, 1957, she witnessed the final day of service at the Government Free Bathhouse. It was the first time since 1878 that the nation’s poor could not take free baths at Hot Springs National Park. There is no record that Roberta Gibson (by 1957 her last name was Jackson) ever worked in another bathhouse.
Roberta Gibson dedicated her working life to helping indigent visitors who sought relief from Hot Springs National Park’s thermal waters. She witnessed significant changes to the national park and serves as a great example of adapting to new situations in order to succeed and give back to those in need.
