Polish Association of Balneology and Physical Medicine

TAKING THE WATERS IN TEXAS: SPRINGS, SPAS, AND FOUNTAINS OF YOUTH

TEXAS’ RESORTS

JANET MACE VALENZA, PH.D.

Having pleasure as well as health in view after “doing” Sour Lake, we extended our trip westward in order to fully inform ourselves as to the comparative merits of the various watering places that are becoming of so much importance to our State- becoming more so as they have heretofore been but little known.

-Galveston Daily News, August 14, 1877

Few traces remain of many resorts. At some places I found only a rusted pipe or a rotting foundation. At others, buildings lay in ruins, awaiting either a bulldozer or a massive infusion of capital. At Sour Lake, Texaco officials personally escorted me to the old site, where only the rudiments of the bathhouse remain. They evidently did not want me wandering around their property, for the site was close to an oily lake where a sinkhole had swallowed up acres of land in the 1920s. In Tioga, the old sites had either burned down or been refashioned for other uses. One old fountain remained, but it was overgrown with weeds. In San Antonio, one of the owners of the Hot Wells Bathhouse showed me where Teddy Roosevelt had signed one of the walls and guided me around the dilapidated, and often times dangerous, openings in what was left of the run-down structure. I swam in one of the two pools where warm, sulphurous water still continually pours from the bank above the San Antonio River. The water was so strong that I could smell its residue on my skin for hours after the swim. At Wizard Wells, some old tubs were hidden away in a defunct restaurant and motel complex, and the only outside signs of its heyday were a covered well and a disappearing wall sign that hailed the baths. As the last vestiges of these sites pass away, we also lose sight of their stories.

Texas is blessed with an abundance of hot and cold mineral waters. More than one hundred recognized springs and wells with varying characteristics, including temperature, mineral composition, and volume, occur in different terrains around the state. Despite the differences in landscapes and waters, settlers created an identifiable resort tradition centered around wells and springs.

People consumed well and spring waters because of their clarity and freshness. They deemed water that contained substantial dissolved salts to be healthful, or health-promoting. Commonly, a pungent taste, smell, or unusual color indicated that the water cured a range of human ailments. Many waters seemed to qualify, and numerous physicians and governmental agencies documented their existence. The United States Geological Survey (USGS) listed watering places as commercial springs, primarily by the criterion of whether liquids were bottled and sold. The Texas Agriculture Department and other state publications also recorded medicinal waters in various counties. Physicians, newspapers, geologists, chemists, and commercial clubs or chambers of commerce described additional springs and wells.

Developed wells and springs spanned most of the state, except the Panhandle and South Texas. Although some large springs, such as San Solomon Springs and Comanche Springs, flowed in West Texas, most people did not regard them as especially therapeutic.

ANATOMY OF TEXAS’ SPRINGS

Since the basis of any spa is its “healing waters,” it is useful to understand the source of these waters. Springs occur as a more or less continual flow of water from the point where the water table intersects the surface of the ground. Surface water from rainfall, for example, generally percolates downward until it reaches an impenetrable layer of rock or fine-grained soil. At that point, the water moves laterally, sometimes for many miles, until it emerges from the ground as a spring. Springs exist in all of the physiographic regions of Texas, although they predominate in East Texas, where rainfall is most abundant.

In 1919, geologist K. Bryan compiled an extensive classification of springs based on the rock structure from which they emerged. Other scientists’ classification took into account the amount of dissolved minerals, such as sulphur or iron, and the volume of discharge. Yet another category detailed the physical forces that caused springs to emerge. Gravity springs issue from the contact of a permeable rock layer with an impervious rock bed. In the Central Texas Hill Country many gravity springs lie at the heads of streams in the Edwards Plateau and along slopes where water-bearing strata meet the surface.

Springs in which the water-bearing strata do not break out at the surface but are deeply buried and rise under hydrostatic pressure through fissures are called artesian springs. Typical artesian springs are those lying at the edge of the Coastal Plain and the Balcones Escarpment. They funnel upward from Edwards and related Cretaceous limestones and include San Marcos Springs, Barton Springs, and Comal Springs. Because of their large size, they tend to be less mineralized than smaller springs, principally because the water has less contact with surrounding rock units and thereby less opportunity to dissolve minerals from those rocks.

The Gulf Coastal Plain is the continuation of the Atlantic Plain from the East Coast to the Texas coast. Here formations dip to the southeast or toward the Gulf, and salt domes such as the famous Spindletop in Jefferson County are common in the western coastal section Waters laden with different mineral salts occur nearer to the surface than in the surrounding strata and emerge as gravity springs. The springs near Sour Lake and High Island were once believed to be the only artesian springs in the coastal region.

Most springs in the northern part of the area, in Cherokee, Rusk, and Harrison Counties, for example, occurred at the edges of perched water tables, or where the groundwater is separated from the main water table by an impermeable zone. Water percolating through these beds ended to be iron-charged or “chalybeate.” In Nacogdoches, Angelina, and Gregg Counties, many springs contained sulphur compounds as the waters passed through lignite beds.

Underground waters often pool in large reservoirs called aquifers. Water from resorts in particular clusters usually came from the same deposits. The waters from southeast of San Antonio, such as Sutherland Springs and the Gonzales Warm Springs Foundation (Ottine), as well as others from Karnes and Gonzales Counties, came from the Carrizo-Wilcox Aquifer. The natural springs from Sutherland Springs emerged cold, while the well at Ottine brought up water at 102 F from a depth of 3,398 feet. The water at Hot Wells and Terrell Hot Well (also called Terrell Wells) resorts in San Antonio (as well as the highly mineralized- 10,500 milligrams per liter- well in Thorndale from which, reportedly, many of Mineral Wells’ famous Crazy Water Crystals were made) came from the “bad water” zone of the Edwards Aquifer. The old wells in Austin at the state capitol and the Austin Natatorium dipped into the Cretaceous Hosston Sand. Marlin’s, Waco’s, and Hubbard’s water came from the Hosston/Trinity Aquifer, but from different depths depending upon the dip of the aquifer. The Pennsylvanian Aquifer supplied Mineral Wells and Lampasas, while in West Texas the spas lay above the Basin and Range Undifferentiated Aquifers.

RESORT IDENTIFICATION

Appendix A lists the 109 of Texas’ 254 counties that boasted of some medicinal mineral waters, although it is probable that almost all counties had at least one small, locally used mineral well or spring. Compiled from governmental reports, early maps, and emigrant guides, this list identifies some sites as “resorts” while others may only have been sources for bottled water. Since most bottlers in Texas marketed waters for medicinal purposes, however, it is assumed that healthseekers also “resorted to” these localities. Names also may refer to the same well or spring under different ownership at a later date. Bell’s Mineral Wells, Blossom Wells, and Beauchamp Wells (Lamar County), for example, may have designated the same place at different times.

Histories of watering places recount stories of Texas’ settlement. For instance, according to one newspaper editor, Hubbard’s Hot Well “was undoubtedly the one facility that brought the most people to the area during the early 1900s and was responsible for Hubbard’s early reputation throughout the State.” Development companies formed to activate plans in the hopes that the waters would provide the nucleus for prosperity. Some succeeded; most did not. New towns withered. Others enjoyed but little prosperity, then died when spa waters no longer seemed important. Among these former resorts are Bath, Wootan Wells, New Birmingham, Burditt’s Wells, New Sutherland Springs, Tuscaloosa or Wyser’s, White Sulphur Springs, Viola, Trinity Mills, Elkhart, Dalby Springs, Mangum, Myrtle Springs, Midyett, and Hynson Springs. Other once-functioning towns, built around the waters, are no longer active, bustling communities: Piedmont, Putnam, Wizard Wells, Saratoga, and Tioga. Still other towns hold few reminders of their watering days: Sulphur Springs (Hopkins County), Franklin, Mount Pleasant, and Thorp Spring. Nevertheless, one might imagine these towns in their heyday, when the “healing waters” drew visitors from far and wide.

RESORT ESTABLISHMENT

There were early periods in the state’s history when springs were the focus of development, notably before and immediately after the Civil War. The 1890s, however, was the peak era for resort establishment. During that decade, fifty-four new places sprang up. In the first decades of the twentieth century, the establishment of resorts declined, and no new watering places appeared in the 1920s. The 1930s ushered in the final and fleeting phase of new establishments with sporadic developments of springs and wells in West and North Central Texas.

Resort establishment thus occurred in major phases: 1830-1889, 1890-1919, 1920-1949. From the late 1830s to the 1850s springs in Southeast Texas, the region closest to the coastal ports, gained prominence. After the Civil War, more watering places became popular in the northeastern part of the state and in Central Texas. The focus next shifted to mineral waters farther west in drier, upland sites, characterized by some as a more healthful area. Finally, from 1920 to 1950 a few sites on this western periphery and in the north central part of Texas sprang up. In this sense the watering tradition in Texas followed the same pattern as Anglo-American settlement, moving west with the frontier.

Incipient Growth: 1830-1889 Settlers and Native Americans probably informally used the more mineralized waters earlier than 1830. Unusual physical features engendered multiple meanings. Salt domes dotted coastal areas in southeastern Texas. The land around Sour Lake exuded different varieties of water, as well as petroleum seepages. Indians from Texas and Louisiana visited Sour Lake- or Medicine Lake, as they called it- to use the water and the black pitch seeping out of the ground to heal sores on their ponies’ backs. Consequently, from such local therapies, bathers later applied petroleum and mud to alleviate skin problems, rheumatism, and venereal disease. Some Native Americans also believed that there had been a violent eruption in the immense mound, which had filled the lake with sour water when it subsided. In 1897 Sour Lake’s black therapist, Dr. Mud, related another version of its origin: At one time Indians started a fire to roast venison while camping in an area that would later be the lake. The earth subsequently caught fire around them and burned a shallow hole until rain filled the lake with medicinal waters. Such examples accounted for the appearance of landscape features and the consequent Native American reverence for them.

Several legends depicted supernatural guidance in the discovery of healing waters. One accounted for the mythical qualities of Sour Lake’s waters. An Indian chief’s daughter, who had died from a disease that plagued the tribe, appeared to her father in a dream. She told him that when she appeared in a different form, he should follow her and drink from the waters. Thereafter, a white doe led the chief and his tribe to a lake fed by springs, and sickness disappeared.

Native Indian occupation of some springs was more than anecdotal. Physical evidence confirms the use of certain water sites. The Mimbres band of Apaches frequented Indian Hot Springs and probably carved the depression in rocks around the springs. Numerous archaeological sites affirm prehistoric settlement. Crude tubs carved out of rock at Brewster County’s Hot Springs also originally served as bathing reservoirs until J. O. Langford built his bathhouse over them. Pictographs and artifacts have also been found there. Langford’s daughter, Lovie, even remembers Indians at her father’s place in the 1920s when the Kickapoos from Nacimiento frequented the springs during the winter.

The historical phase of initial resort establishment involved springs in areas close to immigration entry points- the Gulf Coast and northeastern counties. The Civil War interrupted a growth trend that saw nineteen new springs develop in the 1850s.

Many emigrant guides and maps of Texas during the 1840s and 1850s mentioned medicinal springs. Descriptions recognized some sites as potentially important resorts. Chronicler George Bonnell, for example, noted a white sulphur spring in Montgomery County (probably later called Kellum’s Sulphur Springs in Grimes County), where the surroundings were “pleasant and healthy,” and he suggested that it could become a “fashionable resort during the summer season.”

Such recognition often reflected knowledge of famous spring beyond the borders of the Lone Star State. Bonnell recalled that the town of Carolina, originally named Bath after the English spa, had “red, white sulphur and calibeat (iron-rich)” springs. As with many other settlements in this early period, the town disappeared a few years later. Other mineral springs that attracted interest in this phase of development included Saratoga in Harding County (named after the New York resort), Sulphur Springs in Tyler County, Salinilla Springs on the Brazos River (location unknown), Piedmont in Grimes County, and several sites named White Sulphur Springs, probably after Virginia’s resort with that name. In an 1866 map of Texas, cartographer J. H. Colton located one White Sulphur Springs in Bexar County (eventually called Sutherland Springs) and another in Walker County. There was also a White Sulphur Springs in Cass County. Toward the end of the century, the name of White Sulphur Springs fell from usage, perhaps as settlers tried less to emulate distant places.

The first resorts generally featured crude accommodations. Town developers set aside grounds for tents or boardinghouses. Entrepreneurs sometimes put in concrete or wooden curbs around the edge of a spring and a brush arbor shelter or shed that covered the spring site. Other facilities for visitors included cottages, such as those at Sour Lake, one of the earliest resorts in southeast Texas. In 1857, Frederick Law Olmsted described how its owners had built barracks and crude bathhouses for visitors. That same year, the Galveston Daily News reported on the status of the developing Sour Lake:

Over the pool in the center of the Lake there is a frame building, which, after some repairing, is to used as a bath house for ladies, and a dry path to this structure is now being thrown up for their use. On the line of this path, near the margin of the pool is a spring of pure sulphur water with a wooden curb around it, but owing to its hitherto isolated position, and the occasional overflowing of the Lake into it, there has been but little attention paid to it, and it is in rather a dilapidated condition. The same may be said of a Chalybeate Spring still nearer to the center of the Lake. These, together with a number of (springs of) various descriptions on the outer circle of the Lake, some of them hidden under the bushes and trees, will all be resuscitated in due time, and made accessible and useful in the medicinal jurisprudence of the place.

Establishment of resorts sometimes lagged behind settlement because of the time necessary for developers to recognize the medicinal value of their waters, evidenced either through chemical analysis or through improvement in someone’s health. At other times these valuable waters promoted the area’s settlement. However, accessibility posed an obstacle to resort development. Not all places had the good fortune of being located on a stagecoach line, as was Piedmont Sulphur Springs, on the line between Hempstead and Waco. In 1859 it advertised that “attentive ostlers and good Carriage Houses will secure to beast and vehicle that care and attention so much wanting at many of the public houses of Texas.” However, the popularity of some waters surpassed their inconvenient location. F. M. Cross wrote that “as much as 20 acres of ground (was) solidly covered at one time with tents in the day of their (Lampasas’ springs) discovery (in the 1850s), especially during the summer season.”

Finally, the Civil War contributed to the demand for well-known therapeutic waters, even though no new resorts sprang up at this time. In 1865 Walker’s Texas Division camped at Piedmont near Navasota and drank the waters for their healthful “benefit.” Colonel Hynson tanned leather for the Confederate Army at his springs near Marshal, and a Confederate pharmaceutical laboratory utilized Tyler’s Headache Springs’ water for bottled medicines.

Rapid Increase: 1890-1919 With the establishment of more than one hundred new watering places, this period was the “Golden Age” for resorts in Texas. The attraction of new and different sites, however, posed major problems for already established places. Resort-goers abandoned some earlier resorts and headed farther west. Commentators recognized the trend. A county historian in 1895, for example, noted that Thorp Spring declined because of “the developments of western Texas, opening up so many great watering resorts, that the single handed little sulphur spring began to grow less important.” In addition, visitors likely abandoned some of the other spas because of their poor accommodations. One editorial in 1882 Texas Medical and Surgical Record called average resorts in Texas a “first-class fraud” because “their little medicinal virtues are entirely offset by the rude accommodations and rougher fare generally encountered by the deluded healthseeker when he reaches them.” The article further noted:

It is time that proprietors should know, that the majority of their visitors do not honor them with their presence merely for the sake of a first-class purge, or a sweat, or a good, old, healthy diuresis, for all these can be easier procured through a druggist’s apprentice, right at home, by means of salts, or nitre, and at far less cost, but such health seekers go more for the trip, the change and the recreation than they do for the waters. They expect pleasure as well as physicing… In many localities the temperature of these places ranges very high, and ice is a dream of the past. Again, rooms are small and disagreeable, and not infrequently the reflections of a melancholy subject are enlivened by the sudden appearance of a scorpion or a viper in his bedroom.

The newer resorts tended to cluster around particular waters, though some areas were more popular than others. One group centered around San Antonio. With the exception of San Antonio’s Hot Wells, these sour or sulphurous waters never became overly popular with spa-goers. A second cluster, in the Blacklands, included many highly mineralized, occasionally sulphurous, artesian wells. Except for the nationally famous wells at Marlin, these sites drew only a local or, at most, a regional following. The growth of a third cluster of resorts in northeastern Texas around Marshall had begun earlier. These spas featured more variety in the waters, including rarer iron-bearing or chalybeate springs, and as a result they were more successful in attracting resort-goers. Resorts in the fourth group, in north Central Texas, also varied in the mineral constituents of their waters and gained a excellent reputation, including a national clientele.

In the era of expansion, the railroad guaranteed success for certain resorts. Illustrated brochures advertised the aesthetic and healthful features of towns along their routes. Tioga, for instance, grew up around a watering hole for railroad workers. Railroad promoters developed Hancock Springs in Lampasas, a small cattle town famous for its waters before the town’s settlement. Lampasas flourished as the western terminus of the Gulf, Colorado, and Santa Fe. The Houston and Texas Central Railway boosted one route that included Lampasas, Marlin, and Wootan Wells as “points of interest to tired people.”

Despite the expansion of the railroad network, no “Grand Tour” existed in Texas. It was never fashionable to visit the resorts in succession as it had been in the eastern United States. With the exception of the growing fame of Marlin and Mineral Wells (and later, to a certain extent, Sutherland Springs) with facilities to satisfy out-of-state visitors, the majority of resorts relied on a more local clientele.

The establishment of new resorts peaked in the 1890s. After the turn of the century, fewer new resorts were established and many smaller ones closed as large ones, particularly Mineral Wells, monopolized the market. In the early 1900s, visitors to Mineral Wells, a town of 8,000 inhabitants, numbered 150,000 annually; in one twelve-month period (from 1902 to 1903), the railroad sold 45,000 tickets to Mineral Wells. Twenty years later, 80,000 to 100,000 people a year visited Marlin, a town of merely 5,000 residents. Texas’ more famous establishments thus enjoyed a heyday during the first decades of the current century.

Mineral Wells in particular attracted new settlers and became the model for new resort towns. In 1907, the town’s Daily Index noted: “A very large percentage of our business and professional men and capitalist came here for their health or that of their families.” The Texas and Pacific Quarterly regularly featured articles about towns on its routes, but it eulogized Mineral Wells. As a veritable North American “Carlsbad” and “Fountain of Youth,,” it was “utterly impossible for one to drink the mineral water (there) and attempt to drink liquor at the same time.” If Mineral Wells was not the Fountain of Youth, at least one article suggested that “miracles are performed here every week.” A Fort Worth attorney, “almost restored to (my) former vigor and good health,” advised others to visit Mineral Wells rather than more expensive, out-of-state resorts.

Most Texas spas hoped to emulate the success of Mineral Wells. When Lampasas’ popularity waned, some local citizens hoped to regain it. Mineral Wells provided the standard:

I was struck by the amount of enterprise by the people here (in Mineral Wells) and the lack of anything of the sort in Lampasas. Every owner of a well has a large pavilion, musicians and everything to entertain their guests. Ever house, nearly every residence, has the sign, “Rooms to Rent.” We could outshine Mineral Wells 10 to 1 because it is so hot there.

Even Marlin compared itself to Mineral Wells, as well as to Carlsbad. After visiting Mineral Wells in 1905, one Marlin citizen enjoined his city to pitch its virtues:

W. W. Allen, who has been visiting in Mineral Wells is at home (in Marlin). He says that there are something like 1000 visitors now there. The virtues of the water in Mineral Wells do not begin to compare with our water; we have a beautiful and healthy location and (nature) has blessed us with most favorable surroundings in every way, and yet we have nothing like 1000 visitors here now.

After visiting several resorts, some healthseekers compared experiences but credited recovery to a certain locality, often Mineral Wells. Competition for such testimonials reached a fever pitch as resorts jostled for attention. J. H. Blackburn, M.D., of Brenham who suffered from rheumatism, diabetes (which had caused his blindness), and gout for eighteen years, visited Hot Springs, Arkansas; Monterrey, Mexico; Wootan Wells and Burdette Wells, Texas; and Buffalo Lithia Springs, Virginia. But after his stay in Mineral Wells, he testified that his eyesight and his health improved. Other healthseekers, however, thought less of Mineral Wells’ health claims. One lady swore that twelve or fourteen years of drinking Mineral Wells’ water did not relieve her rheumatism and stomach troubles, but after thirty months, Putnam’s water restored her health. A superintendent of the Texas Central Railroad noted, “I am thoroughly convinced that the Mangum water is better than the Mineral Wells water and this being the case, with depot accommodations, it will soon make a good town.”

Nevertheless, Mineral Wells continued to attract the largest number of healthseekers as well as much unsolicited publicity from other spas. Yet some people believed the town needed even more promotion. Former governor T. M. Campbell wrote:

Texas does not realize what she has in that town, and it is not advertised half enough. Every time I go there, I come away with a greater belief in its possibilities. It is Nature’s resting place, and health resort for Texas and all the world. It is destined to be one of the greatest watering places in America.

Part of the reason for Mineral Wells’ success lies in the aggressive policy of the town’s Commercial Club, which did its best to promote the spa. Under the leadership of secretary J. W. Register, the club printed and distributed small three-by-five-inch booklets, titled “Health and Pleasure at Mineral Wells,” “The Better Way’: Mineral Wells Water (Route) to Health,” “Read What Physicians Say,” plus hotel guides, a quarterly magazine, testimonials, and articles.

In a 1905 letter reprinted in the Texas and Pacific Quarterly, the author compared Mineral Wells to other resorts in the country:

Of course, it is not in any regard to be compared with the elegancies and luxuries of Northern and Western resorts to which the financial princes of American resort for pleasures and to spend their money, but for suffering humanity who are seeking relief from their afflictions, it offers all the comforts necessary, and that, too, for a price that the poorest can afford, and is, to my mind, of the highest consideration.

This simple statement articulated the philosophy and strength of all Texas spa, emphasizing facilities for sick, indigent, and poor people. Most resorts accepted this assertion as reality and utilized it to their advantage.

Railroads continued to play important roles in facilitating access to these watering places in the early 1900s. The Texas Central Railroad, for example, offered to build a depot in Mangum, provided the town deed alternate lots to the company. Its superintendent believed that the spa’s water was better than that of Mineral Wells. Like Mangum, many resorts served as dining places along a railroad’s route: two trains stopped daily at Mangum to allow passengers to visit the community and sample its water and local cuisine. In addition, ‘immigrant cars” offered cheap rates for people to explore possible homesites or to move household belongings to new settlements. These rates also lured potential investors to resort communities.

Decline: 1920-1949 Just as railroads facilitated the promotion of new spas with well-tested mineral waters, the automobile began to play a dual role in resort life: it both helped and hurt business. Smaller resorts began to decline after it became possible to drive to larger, more famous spas. After 1915, when several fires destroyed much of Wootan Wells, nearby Marlin benefited from the town’s demise. It was easier, it seemed, to drive to Marlin than to wait for the owners to rebuild Wootan Wells. On the other hand, the automobile facilitated access to more-distant watering sites, such as springs on the Rio Grande. In 1929, at the relatively hard-to-reach spa at (Langford) Hot Springs in Brewster County, owner J. O. Langford counted more than six hundred cars carrying healthseekers to his resort.

Aided by improved transportation, both resorts and sanitariums grew up around mineral waters in West Texas. In contrast to resorts, sanitariums drew upon a pool of more critically ill patients who undertook long, sometimes difficult, journeys for a cure. The privately owned Grogan Wells Sanitorium in Sweetwater utilized steam baths and mineral water treatments, shipped out bottled water, and built a hotel and pavilion. On the South Concho River south of San Angelo, the Christoval Mineral Wells bathhouse (later called Percifull Chiropractic Sanitarium) offered sulphur water from about 1920 until the 1980s. The town of Carlsbad sported a mineral well, a pleasure pavilion, a public bathhouse, and the state sanitorium, which probably used mineral waters in its therapy after its construction in 1912.

Several resorts, particularly in West Texas, grew up independently of nearby towns. With the ease of the automobile and improved highways, travel to remote places became easier, especially if the waters were regarded as special. These resorts, the last to become established, survived into recent times. Jewel Babb, a white healer or curandera, operated Indian Hot Springs on the Rio Grande River until World War II, when gas rationing hurt operations. In 1967, H. L. Hunt restored the hotel and built a bathhouse. Indian Hot Springs remained accessible to visitors until 1974, when Hunt died. West Texas’ Kingston Hot Springs, also called Ruidosa Springs, blossomed late as well. It closed in May 1990, and local folks considered this action “the end of an era.” Toward the close of the decade, it would reopen under different ownership as Chinati Hot Springs.

Mineral water spas once accommodated healthseekers and pleasure-seekers alike across the state in an east-to-west trajectory. While many spas clustered together, their success depended to a great extent on the accessibility of their locations, and their location, in turn, relied upon the presence of healing waters.

The University of Texas Press http://www.utexas.edu/utpress/