Hot Springs, NC

Hot Springs is a Madison County town in the Asheville metropolitan area where the Appalachian Trail runs directly down Main Street and crosses the French Broad River. The 2020 census counted 520 residents. Spring Creek meets the river here, and the only known natural hot spring in North Carolina sits beside the town’s historic resort setting. That geography compresses several kinds of movement into a small valley: hikers pass through downtown, rafters use the river, and people come to the outdoor tubs fed by the mineral spring.

Hot Springs began as Warm Springs and gained a road connection when the Buncombe Turnpike reached the valley in 1828. The railroad arrived in 1882; the Mountain Park Hotel followed in 1886, and the town later served as a World War I internment camp for German merchant sailors after the hotel grounds were leased to the federal government in 1917. The Hot Springs Public Library now sits on Bridge Street beside the trail, giving residents a civic place in the same corridor that carries hikers and river trips. Hot Springs is a mountain town whose history, recreation, and downtown all meet at the water.