Grab a soak, smuggle some ‘shine.
On the morning of June 17 , 1933,a train leaving from Fort Smith , Arkansas , pulled up to Kansas City ’s Union Station . On it were a group of officer and one FBI Special Agent , with federal prisoner Frank “ Jelly ” Nash in towage . They were transporting the infamous burglar and manslayer back to the penitentiary in Leavenworth , Kansas , from which he had break loose three age earlier .
Waiting to spring Nash at the station were fully armed mob associates Verne Miller , Adam Richetti , and the ill-famed bank robber Charles “ Pretty Boy ” Floyd . The officers disembark , and just as they had placed Nash in the front seat of their waiting car , a articulation was heard saying “ allow ‘ em have it ! ” Machine gun fire sprayed , killing two constabulary detective , the police headman of McAlester , Oklahoma , and four ship’s officer , include the Kansas City Special Agent . Also killed ? Frank Nash . Whether that was intentional was never determined .
The fucking incident became known as theKansas City Massacreand is mark in legal story as the accelerator for stronger federal crime laws — including allowing FBI federal agent to gestate small-arm and giving them the authority to make apprehension . ( Before that , their jurisdiction wasmuchmore limited . )
Don’t worry, it’s not the real Capone.|Photo by John David Pittman for Thrillist
But there ’s also something else notable : Frank Nash had been hiding out for year — enjoying netherworld protection after bust word of honor — in Hot Springs , Arkansas . That was n’t by accident .
The thermal soaking watersof what was then make love as America ’s Spa City were not just a magnet for Texas oilmen , musicians including Duke Ellington and Elvis , baseball game players like Babe Ruth , and tourists who flocked to slick down establishments like the Como Hotel , where the glaze over white bricks come indented with the word “ Tiffany , ” manufactured by Leon Tiffany , buddy of the jeweler Louis Comfort Tiffany . This was also the preferred holiday destination for mobsters from all over .
Al Capone first inflict in the mid twenties , when he was the good - hand man for Johnny Torrio in Chicago ; it ’s said Capone would “ take the water ” to plow the syphilis that would finally get out him deteriorated . Capone ’s cohort Lucky Luciano made appearance , as did gaming kingpin Julius Salsbury from Baltimore and the brutal Owen Vincent Madden , aka Owney “ The Killer”Madden . ( He owned New York ’s subway system . Also , he killed a clustering . ) Madden made his affair with Hot Springs lasting : After his 2d least sandpiper in Sing Sing , he was deport from New York by then - regulator Franklin D. Roosevelt . He relocated to the Arkansas town , eventually hook up with the postmaster ’s daughter and living his twenty-four hours out violence - gratuitous in the South .
They don’t call it the Valley of the Vapors for nothing.|Photo by John David Pittman for Thrillist
The gangsters came for the peace . “ The political relation and the government here were so loose , they protected them , because they hail with a lot of money , ” says Robert Raines , director ofThe Gangster Museum of America . “ This was a good place to meet , discuss business , have a good clock time , and go back and rob a bank somewhere else and get some more money . ” He note that there were no looting in Hot Springs in the ‘ 40s , ‘ 50s , and ‘ 60s , because all the robber were there onvacation .
You could say the town was , well , ask for it . Before the gangsters even caught current of air of the position , Hot Springs — a portion of which had been parceled in 1832 into federally make out estate before becoming a national park in 1931 — had an underbelly of its own . Gambling in Hot Springs start in the 1870s , and unite it , bagnio and illegal auction planetary house . The watershed in the urban center was striking and genuine : On one side of Central Avenue was the Union property of the bathhouses , beautiful and ornate in architecture . And on the other side , lawlessness . Here was a metropolis where Prohibition never happened . Where Al Capone bootleg moonlight out to Chicago in its Mountain Valley Spring Water jug . At its peak were over 70 gaming locations — all lawlessly operating — include the Oaklawn pedigree racing track , still there today . And it was an open secret : “ The FBI in 1963 said in aNew YorkTimesarticle that Hot Springs answer for for $ 100 million dollars a yr of illegal gambling and prostitution , ” says Raines . “ The rest of the country knew about Hot Springs . ” Steps were taken to dismantle the illegal play operations the next class .
And , today , it ’s here on this formerly lawless side of the street , across the agency from the historic Buckstaff Bathhouse , thatThe Gangster Museum of Americanow reside .
The former Fordyce Bathhouse is now a museum.|Photo by John David Pittman for Thrillist
A pavilion alfresco is decoratedwith dice and performing cards . Formerly a Frankie ’s cafeteria - flair restaurant , this 10,000 straight foot of space is tricked out , thrust with paraphernalia donated and picked up from auction sale , admit pool cue from its subject topic with immersive elements : spell pathfinder in peg - strip suit and fedora , original cassino games you could dally — admit an previous - school toothed wheel table — and mysterious passageway . You enter through a bank vault door that blends into the scope until , you know , it swings open .
This is the second location of the museum , open in 2011 . The first , in 2007 , occur about from an idea Raines get from his friend who play conventions in the urban center . “ He read there are two thing that formula - goers require when they see , ” Raines recalls . “ One is , ‘ Can I still take a thermal bath?’”(Yes , you’re able to . ) “ The second is , ‘ Did Al Capone really come here ? ’ ” Raines , a former computer technologist , thespian , and video producer , started digging into the city ’s mob history and was surprised at how deep it go . “ I do n’t opine anybody knows why this place is like it was , ” he says . “ So I opine if I could reckon out a fashion to recite the news report where it ’s not really talking about gangsters and their way of life , but more or less talk about them as visitor and tourists occur here , and what they did while they were here , then it might be palatable . ”
Vapor Rises From the Ground in This Arkansas Vacation Town
It’s is mist-ical. It’s mobster-y. It’s a magnet for misfits.
Talk to him today and he ’s a virtual cyclopaedia of the underworld , citing names and dates — and also law-breaking — with venial prompt . There are seven galleries in the museum , include a Madden Gallery , a Casino Gallery , and a Capone Gallery , which include a picture of Capone ’s cell atEastern State Penitentiary , his 1930TimeMan of the Yearcover , and some example of those Mountain Valley Spring Water jugs ( that guy was always work ) . Each elbow room features a video hosted by Raines , but there are also interview with subjects like Deirdre Marie Capone , the granddaughter of Capone ’s brother , Ralph Capone .
Raines is presently into outlaws — the rough - and - tumble descendants of Jesse James , different from the slick gangsters whose underlings did most of the dirty employment — as he ’s researching them for an upcoming book of account . So demand him about a pet item in the museum , and he ’ll go to robber John Dillinger , specifically the museum ’s plaster Dillinger end masquerade , obtained from author , formerPlayboyeditor , and acquaintance William J. Helmer , who pretty muchwrote the Koran on Dillinger . Helmer ’s auntie was work in forensics at the hospital when Dillinger ’s torso come in ; a photo of her work over it is on the wall .
He ’s also effusive about the Baseball Room . Major League Baseball ’s Spring Training as we know it began in Hot Springs , with owners suck up to the thermal waters . “ Originally the owners occur here and enjoyed the bathroom and they said , ‘ Well , you know what , these guys are drink and riot everywhere anyway , why do n’t we get ‘ em all here ? ’ ” says Raines , the idea being the player would get their jolly out at night and “ moil it out ” in the morning before practice session . The township was small enough for the owners to keep an eye on their activities , and the outdoors of Hot Springs National Park also made for expectant training grounds : the 1939 Brooklyn Dodgers apparently look at 10 - mile rise over the mountain trails to get their tree branch in embodiment .
All the secrets are inside. Plus one death mask.|Photo by John David Pittman for Thrillist
The players were also amusement for the mobsters that were there . “ All of the mob were from big cities that had baseball teams , ” says Raines . “ So they could do here and in the mornings go out to Whittington Park , which is a ten - minute walkway from downtown , and watch Babe Ruth and the others flirt for detached . Just sit in the stands — which were just five or six concrete step — and watch out ‘ em and holler at ‘ em . ”
This Underrated National Park Was Once Al Capone’s Favorite Weekend Trip
It’s also the only national park with a brewery inside.
baseball game luminaries like Babe Ruth , Honus Wagner , Jackie Robinson , Satchel Paige , all hail through . You ’ll find their pictures on the wall of the verandah , next to the variety of creepy statue of Babe Ruth , under twinkling brightness mimic a dark at the park .
After whirl the line roulette rack or cranking the arm of the one - armed bandit , stop in the last room for a photo with a dapper Al Capone , lollygag in all white . Then pass away through the endowment shop , which now include The Hatterie , where you could pick up your own retro digs . Here you ’ll also find several books on the museum ’s subject matter , admit the latterly bring out ( andNew YorkTimesnotable)The Vapors : A Southern Family , the New York Mob , and the acclivity and dusk of Hot Springs , America ’s Forgotten Capital of ViceandHot Springs : From Capone to Costello , write by Raines . And if you ’re thirsting for more info , last year Raines launched a podcast : TGMOA After Dark . Original interviews include one with Colonel Lynn Davis , the manager of the Arkansas State Police in August 1967 , when Governor Winthrop Rockefeller ordered the gambling in Hot Springs shut down . To carry through the command , Davis set up a raid , sequester truckloads of gaming equipment from the casinos , which the state law set on fire . And that was the root of the ending — only to live on at the Gangster Museum .
Try your luck on an original roulette table.|Photo by John David Pittman for Thrillist
