Alligators — they are big, they are scary, and there are more than a hundred of them in Hot Springs.
Fortunately, the 142 alligators at the Arkansas Alligator Farm & Petting Zoo are safely enclosed, but that does not stop the many tourists who flock to Spa City throughout the year from enjoying the thrill of watching, holding and feeding the beasts.
In their midst is third-generation owner Jamie Bridges, who grew up with the animals.
“When I was a kid, I’d be up here during the summers, playing in the creek and stuff, and I’d slip a gator out every once in a while — a little gator — without [dad] knowing, and I got caught before and had my booty busted,” he said, “but I had a lot of friends that lived around the farm, and they’d always say, ‘Get a little gator out, and let’s play with it in the creek.’”
The alligator farm started in 1902 when H.L. Campbell went to the Everglades in Florida and brought back 1,500 alligators, Bridges said.
“Now, that’s a lot of gators, and I don’t know if he really had that many, but maybe he did. I don’t know,” he added.
In addition to the reptiles, the alligator farm included a museum of curiosities, some of which are still there today. Bridges’ grandfather purchased the alligator farm in 1947, and Bridges’ parents purchased the establishment in 1965.
The business passed to Bridges and his three siblings in 2016 after the death of his parents. Bridges bought out two siblings and now manages the farm with his wife, Suzy. One of his brothers owns a quarter of the business and works there occasionally.
Over the years, more and more animals have been added to the farm. Guests can feed and pet goats, sheep, donkeys, emus, rabbits and tortoises at the petting zoo, and the farm recently added a parakeet house with about 60 parakeets that visitors can buy tickets to feed. Other animals include wolves, peacocks, raccoons, monkeys, lemurs and turkeys.
Although there are not as many curiosities as there once were, many of them having been stolen in the 1940s, Bridges said there are still a number of taxidermy pieces, including a swordfish, a sea turtle and the famed merman.
“We have a replica of an alligator nest that was actually dug up and preserved, and you can see little gators coming out of the eggs still,” he said. “Don’t ask me how they did it, but it’s been here as long as I’ve been here and probably since 1902. … Kids, they say, ‘Look at the little gator. It’s being born right now,’ and of course, it’s been like that for probably 80, 90, 100 years.”
However, the main attraction is and has always been the alligators. In 1918, back when Major League Baseball spring training took place in Hot Springs, Babe Ruth hit a ball 573 feet into the alligator pond from neighboring Majestic Park.
The career-defining home run was featured in the 2015 documentary, “The First Boys of Spring,” and so was the alligator farm. Bridges said he held a camera on a pole underwater while filmmakers reenacted the moment.
“We have postcards we have found of some of the famous baseball players like Tris Speaker, Thomas Wagner. We have some cards with them with the gators,” Bridges said. “It’s pretty neat to know that Babe Ruth hit a home run into our middle gator pond.”
Every visitor has the opportunity to hold a small alligator in an indoor enclosure, but the big boys are outside. The farm has feed shows at noon on Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays, during which guests can buy chicken quarters to feed the gators using a pole and a string.
Bridges said he used to go into the pens to feed the alligators during the feed shows, but he stopped after being bit by an 8-foot alligator about 14 years ago. A tourist who was filming the feed show caught the moment on camera, and the footage was featured on Animal Planet.
“I’m lucky to be here, really, because if he’d have got me in the back of his mouth, two or three [more bites] would have got me, and I might not be here,” Bridges said. “I got 36 stitches in my arm.”
The animals are usually peaceful, he added, but they are very active while being fed, especially during warm weather.
“With the gators, you’ve just got to be very careful because, like, when I got bit, I’ve been around them all my life,” he said. “I let my guard down. I was too relaxed around them, and it nearly cost me.”
Nesting mothers can also be aggressive, and although the farm does not raise baby gators — the animals require water that is 4 to 5 feet deep for mating, Bridges said, adding that the park’s ponds are about 2 feet deep — females sometimes lay unfertilized eggs, which they protect fiercely.
Every 10 or 15 years, the farm gets permits to procure 12 to 15 baby alligators from the Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge in Louisiana if it is time to restock.
The biggest alligator, Big Al, named after gangster Al Capone, who frequented Hot Springs, is 10 feet long and weighs about 600 pounds, Bridges said. He estimated the oldest alligator to be about 60.
Although there are no wild alligators in Hot Springs, Bridges said, some of the farm’s alligators have made it into the local waterways before. About a decade ago, people broke into the farm and stole 12 of the 6-inch babies, plus a 3-foot-long gator.
After someone tipped off the authorities, Bridges said, the thieves ditched the animals, some of which were found in Lake Hamilton by fishermen. Bridges only recovered three alligators.
“The rest of them probably got eaten, truthfully, because they weren’t but 6 inches long,” he said. “Even in the wild, a gator will lay 40 to 60 eggs, and, let’s say, 40 of them hatch out. Only about 4 percent of them will grow up to adulthood because when they’re little, everything eats them.”
Workers get to the farm at 7:30 a.m. to care for the animals, which Bridges said is a 365-day-a-year job. He said he is grateful to have four full-time staff members to help. Business slows down during the winter, when the reptiles hibernate and the park closes two days a week.
The farm usually hires a few high school students to help out during the busy summer months, he said, and Bridges, a former basketball coach, recruits the Lake Hamilton High School basketball team to move the animals inside for the hibernation period.
“If you played basketball for me, you moved gators twice a year,” he said. “They’d come up here, and they’d drag them by the tail and drag them in, and that’s how we get them into the building. … Coach Scotty Pennington, we’re still good friends, and he still brings his basketball team up here, and they help me move gators in and out, and I’ll pay for a team camp or whatever he’d like me to do.”
He said he enjoys watching young visitors interact with the animals, and a lot of them have a hard time saying, “Lator, Gator!” to the farm. The unique attraction has a way of bringing families back for the next vacation.
“It’s pretty neat to talk to them year after year, and we have people that come up here and say, ‘I brought my kids when they were young. This is my son I brought when he was young. Now he’s bringing his kids,’” Bridges said. “It’s just sort of a family-type deal. They keep coming back, and that makes us feel really good.”
