Water brought people to Hot Springs thousands of years ago. Native Americans agreed to make what became known as the Valley of the Vapors a spot for rejuvenation and peace.

By 1871, pharmacist Peter Greene and brother John Greene were selling what was known as Lockett's Spring Water. The water was named for Benjamin Lockett and his son Enoch.

"The Locketts owned the spring and were the first to recognize its unusual qualities, particularly its purity and beneficial mineral content," Anne Speed writes for the Central Arkansas Library System's Encyclopedia of Arkansas. "The Greenes purchased the land from the Locketts, improving the site and constructing a two-story hotel, initially called Mountain Valley Resort Hotel and later Mountain Valley Hotel & Sanitarium.

"The brothers renamed the water Mountain Valley after a community nearby. John Greene oversaw the spring and managed the hotel while Peter moved to downtown Hot Springs to establish the first distributorship at 195 Central Ave. Mountain Valley water originates at a protected spring on what was once the grounds of the hotel, just west of Arkansas 7 about 12 miles from downtown Hot Springs."

More than 150 years later, water is in the news again at Hot Springs.

I never thought I would get excited about a water treatment facility, but a new one that's built to look like a huge red barn near Hot Springs is different. To put it simply, it's an economic development game-changer for this part of the state.

I'm in the car with Gary Troutman, the energetic president and chief executive officer of the Greater Hot Springs Chamber of Commerce. He details the history of this project as we head south out of downtown.

Discussions about the need for what's known as the Water Barn began 15 years ago. Troutman says the project has been a "labor of love" for city

manager Bill Burrough. The Water Barn is capable of producing 15 million gallons of water per day. At a time when business and civic leaders in cities across the country are worried about the availability of water, Hot Springs is set for what its leaders hope will be decades of population and commercial growth.

We visit the 28,600-square-foot water treatment plant along with a 5,700-square-foot administration and laboratory building.

"This will allow us to be the next growth area in Arkansas after northwest Arkansas, Conway, Saline County and Jonesboro," Troutman says. "You can now combine an almost unlimited source of water with our improved broadband access, the highway improvements we've completed and a growing downtown."

The city had long used water from Lake Hamilton and its reservoir at Lake Ricks, but water usage was starting to exceed 80 percent of production capacity by 2010.

"Efforts to address the problem started in earnest in 2012," Burrough says. "Many people helped us along the way."

There were extensive negotiations between the Mid-Arkansas Water Alliance and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers regarding the........

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