This is Bridge Street in Hot Springs. It connects Central Avenue and Malvern Streets just about a block south of the Hot Springs Visitors Center and it's about twice as long as it is wide. In older editions of the Guinness Book of World Records it's listed as the "World's Shortest City Street." I checked the current edition of Guinness and discovered that the listing is no longer carried. This can only mean somebody showed the publishers an enormous kumquat and something had to go.

This same street is enigmatically listed in Ripley's Believe it or Not as "the world's busiest street for its size." I'm not exactly sure what to make of that.

The Hot Springs River used to run along Central Avenue, here in the foreground. In 1870 it was paved over and today it runs beneath the street through the basements of these buildings on its way to Lake Hamilton. So prior to 1870 this was a bridge. Now it's a street. Get it? "Bridge Street."

RTJ--2/1/2000