The baths are open 24 hours a day to hotel guests and 7am to 9pm to the public. There is also a public mineral water swimming pool open at weekends. Milk River is popular with Jamaicans. The atmosphere is very homey. You are likely to meet hotel guests wandering around in their dressing gowns on their way to or from the baths or sipping early morning coffee on the screened verandah.
Locals drop by for a bath or a meal.
At weekends there is usually a crowd. The spa was discovered in the eighteenth century by a slave belonging to Jonathan Ludford. He then fenced the place, put the slave there as a watchman and eventually willed the property to the government. The first baths were constructed and opened to the public in 1794. Milk River is a comfortable base from which to explore the south coast of Clarendon or St Elizabeth.