Rediscovering America_ Exploring the Small Towns of Virginia & Maryland - Bill Burnham [25]
Hot Springs & Warm Springs
Around Town
Hot Springs and Warm Springs rose to national prominence on the wellspring of warm water. As the county seat of Bath County, Warm Springs enjoyed its greatest popularity in the late 18th and early 19th century, when doctors postulated that water at body temperature had medicinal value. Travelers braved a bumpy carriage ride from East Coast cities like Washington DC to check in at Col. Fry’s Warm Springs Hotel, a process that included a weigh-in. After a few weeks of touring area springs, guests weighed themselves before leaving. Quite opposite of our modern tendency to bemoan weight gain while on holiday, these people strove to add extra pounds.
Two white octagonal structures on the southbound side of US 220 in Warm Springs are original bathhouses in which the elite of American history have dunked their derrieres, and visitors still do today. The men’s house was built in 1761, and the women’s in 1838. Thomas Jefferson spent three weeks here in 1818, bathing twice daily and declaring the baths “of the first merit.” Today, the Jefferson Pools bear his name and are listed on the National Register of Historic places. The women’s bathhouse has a ducking chair that enabled invalids to bathe in the 98-degree mineral water. Mrs. Robert E. Lee used it on her visits, hoping the waters would assuage her rheumatoid arthritis.
As time progressed, notions about body temperature springs being the most beneficial gave way to belief that hot springs were of highest value. Encouraged by published reports of one Dr. Thomas Goode, visitors came to regard the 105-degree springs five miles south as more beneficial. Not entirely unbiased, the good doctor also owned The Homestead resort at the appropriately named town of Hot Springs.
While Dr. Goode is credited with creating the first resort at Hot Springs, he wasn’t the first to put up guests. Thomas Bullett, a member of the Virginia militia and co-patriot of George Washington, built the first Homestead in 1766. Washington visited here on his travels from Fort Dinwiddie, prior to his becoming our first chief executive. Since then, at least 14 US Presidents have visited the various incarnations of this resort. Their portraits hang in the President’s Lounge, from Washington to Bill Clinton. Order a Manhattan or a martini and just soak in the ambience.
The Homestead built a reputation as the place where the wealthy wiled away the summer. Cities of the Tidewater region suffered from unbearable heat, poor sanitation, mosquitoes and epidemics of yellow fever. Those with the means to do so escaped this by spending summers in the mountains, where they “took the cure,” drank fresh mountain spring water and soaked in the springs.
In the last two decades of the 1800s, J.P. Morgan became a shareholder in a company that operated The Homestead. Aided by his financing and resources of the C&O Railroad, whose president was also involved with The Homestead, a rail line was built from Covington to Hot Springs – but extended no farther. It proved the final straw for Warm Springs’ biggest resort, which closed in the 1920s and was torn down.
The late 20th century brought a revival of small, exclusive inns at Warm Springs, and the restoration of The Homestead into a golf and spa resort that today ranks among the top family vacation spots in the nation. The Homestead’s turn-around, completed in the last decade, comes compliments