Bard Springs Bathhouse

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1993.

From the record

“The Bard Springs Bathhouse is a historic recreational support facility in Ouachita National Forest. It is located at the Bard Springs recreation site, southeast of Mena and north of Athens in Polk County, off County Road 82 and Forest Road 106 on the banks of Blaylock Creek.”
Wikipedia article Bard Springs Bathhouse, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 33 National Register listings published here for Polk County · listed in 1993 · category: Building.

Sources: the Wikipedia article · the National Register database, National Park Service

The listing

What is counted as historic. The nomination lists 1 building as contributing to the listing.
Address. FS Rd. 106 NW of Athens, Caney Cr. Wildlife Management Area, Ouachita NF, Athens
When was it listed? October 1993
Category. building
Also known as. Facilities Constructed by the CCC in Arkansas MPS
Township. Gap Springs township
National Register reference number. 93001073 - assigned by the National Park Service when the property was listed.

Fires near this property

36 since 1992

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 36 fires within 5 miles of Bard Springs Bathhouse between 1992 and 2020, burning about 1,849 acres in total. 16 started naturally. 6 were recorded as arson. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Reported cause	Fires
Natural	16
Arson/incendiarism	6
Debris and open burning	5
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	4
Equipment and vehicle use	2
Smoking	2
Railroad operations and maintenance	1

The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.

Date	Cause	Size	Reported by	Name on the report
6 September 2006	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	21 acres	Arkansas Forestry Commission	not named
6 September 2006	Arson/incendiarism	5.0 acres	Arkansas Forestry Commission	not named
30 September 2000	Natural	91 acres	Ouachita National Forest	VILES BRANCH
21 September 1992	Natural	under an acre	Ouachita National Forest	not named
20 September 2000	Arson/incendiarism	1.5 acres	Ouachita National Forest	MISSOURI MTN.
19 September 2000	Arson/incendiarism	50 acres	Arkansas Forestry Commission	not named
12 September 2006	Natural	9.0 acres	Arkansas Forestry Commission	not named
28 August 2001	Natural	5.0 acres	Arkansas Forestry Commission	not named

Every fire recorded in Polk County

Mines and quarries near this property

10 of 12 shown

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 12 workings within 5 miles of Bard Springs Bathhouse: 9 past producers, 2 prospects, 1 unknown. None of them still produces. What was taken out: Manganese, Stone, Crushed/Broken, Barium-Barite, Kaolin. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Site	Commodity	Status
Avant & Heath	Slate, Dimension	Past Producer
Pike County Clays	Kaolin	Unknown
He Mountain Coon Creek	Barium-Barite	Past Producer
National Slate Co Quarry	Stone, Crushed/Broken	Past Producer
Tom Heath Quarry	Stone, Crushed/Broken	Past Producer
Viles Creek	Barium-Barite	Past Producer
Coon Creek	Manganese	Past Producer
E S White Prospect	Manganese	Prospect
Harold Bullard Prospects	Manganese	Prospect
Harris Creek Group	Manganese	Past Producer

Every working recorded in Polk County

Map coverage status

No historic map-sheet match is published for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary. Browse the county's mapped places while that work is pending.

Listed places nearby

6 within 8 miles

Other National Register properties close enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties to their map sheets.

Property	Distance	Listed
Bard Springs Dam No. 2	under 500 feet	1993
Bard Springs Dam No. 1	under 500 feet	1993
Bard Springs Picnic Shelter	under 500 feet	1993
Tall Peak Fire Tower	1.8 miles	1993
Shady Lake CCC Bridge #2	1.9 miles	2010
Shady Lake CCC Bridge #1	2.1 miles	2010

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 93001073 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Polk County	All 33 listed properties in this county.

Provenance

Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.