Daylight pours in through the palladium windows that surround the indoor pool at the Omni Homestead Resort in Hot Springs. Western Virginia long has been a haven for those who enjoy soaking in natural springs of various types.
Pestilence and pollution being among the more pressing modern concerns, it is useful to recall the region this newspaper serves has for centuries served as a source of refuge and healing from such public health menaces.
Time was that travelers would arrive here from the world over to absorb the healing and restorative power of mineral waters and fresh mountain air.
As far back as the 18th century Colonial era, the historic role of such famous resorts as the Homestead in Hot Springs and its West Virginia neighbor the Greenbrier in White Sulphur Springs has been well-documented.
Perhaps less familiar to many are accounts of mineral spring-related enterprises that once thrived in the Roanoke Valley. Reminders of these commercial oases have appeared here previously, most recently during discussion of the free-flowing spring that has long refreshed motorists from a font at Villamont along U.S. 460 in far western Bedford County.
That reporting led to a more detailed examination of spring-fed locations from Villamont to the nearby headwaters of Glade Creek all the way into Vinton. More will come shortly.
Sources for the following report include the work of historians Stan Cohen and Deedie Kagey.
Edward Pollard’s 1870 volume “The Virginia Tourist” described the springs region of the state as an arc starting at Allegheny Springs in southeastern Montgomery County at the headwaters of the south fork of the Roanoke River all the way to Bath County to the north.
Touting another health benefit of the region, Pollard charmed readers by labeling it “America’s Sanitarium” for its supposed benefits for respiratory affliction.
“The springs region actually encompasses the entire length of the Appalachian Chain from New York to Alabama, but most of the resorts were concentrated in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia and along the Alleghany Front in West Virginia,” Cohen wrote in “Historic Springs of Virginia: A Pictorial History.” Therein he lists over 200 such spas/resorts in the two states with the caveat that the roster is not complete, other properties assumed lost to history.
In addition to describing where these resorts and their water sources were, Cohen also detailed what their springs consisted of. Not all gushers are the same. Six broad categories of spring were listed.
Saline springs are identified by dissolved salts of calcium, magnesium, and sodium. Sulphur waters contain hydrogen sulfide and have a struck-match smell, a whiff of which one may on occasion catch southbound on Interstate 81 going into Montgomery County. Chalybeate springs have iron traces that may convey a faintly orange tint to the water and stain white porcelain.
Also included on the list are alkaline and calcic (lime) waters and thermal springs such as those that have warmed and relaxed bathers in the Warm Springs Valley of Bath County for generations.
Speaking of warm water, most springs are not the 100ish-degree sorts that soothed aching joints from pre-Columbian North America on.
For instance, describing the two swimming pools on the grounds of the resort at Rockbridge Baths that were filled by spring water, Cohen put it this way: “The water temperature was a constant 72 degrees, which was delightfully cool on a hot summer day.”
Friends, I do not know how you define delight, but a pool with a temperature at which trout may survive poses a challenge to human swimmers. Such pools used to be all over the Roanoke Valley and the region beyond. Some probably are still in service.
Take it from one survivor from the demographic that endured such chilly childhood dips, the experience renders the lips a deathly blue, shrivels the body’s extremities, and under the right circumstances may stop a heart.
One such architectural relic of a pool in the Carvins Cove area drew a reader question a while back. The best guess is the pool was part of an amusement park that opened in 1921. Kagey identified the facility as Tuck-Away Park with proprietor F.B. Reedy, attractions including a swimming pool and dance hall with entertainment provided by the Roanoke Machine Works band.
Nearby Bennett Springs was a private resort community. The 22-room Cove Alum Springs Hotel included a ballroom and four cottages while operating in the mid-19th century on land one day to be inundated by the Carvins Cove Reservoir, Kagey wrote in her history of Roanoke County.
Back to the 460 east corridor, Cohen identified three historic resort properties from New London to the limits of the Star City. From east to west they were Bedford Springs (although the location was in Campbell County); Blue Ridge Springs in Botetourt; and Coyner Springs just east of the Roanoke County line.
Bedford Springs may have had the best back story, a wrenching tale of false-hearted love. As Cohen related it, a patriot soldier returned home after the Yorktown surrender only to discover his lady love had wed another.
The broken-hearted protagonist of this melodrama retreated to the spring where his plan was to lie down and await death. A little girl discovered the unhappy fellow in this desperate condition and revived him with a drink from the spring.
The man came to resume his life but never married. The story goes that he returns on occasion to the spring at midnight in ghostly form, arriving on a white horse, to dismount and toast the little girl and the healing spring and then curse the wicked woman who had left him.
At Blue Ridge Springs, not far at all from the spring at Villamont, attractions for the moneyed classes that were its customers included horseback riding, bowling, billiards, lawn tennis, croquet, golf, dancing, and swimming. Spring water touted to be a cure for dyspepsia was drunk by the gallon by guests on site as well as being shipped by the bottle all over the country.
Blue Ridge survived a terrible fire sparked by a passing train in the 1870s and then the financial panic of 1893, but like all similar facilities in the region, it eventually succumbed to changing recreational tastes and modern methods of health care. Another factor was the advent of the automobile resulting in a wider scope of family vacation possibilities.
Mysteriously, a high number of these hotels ended their business lives in ashes and ruins after catastrophic fires. Insurance fraud has been suggested as a potential common denominator among these unfortunate episodes.
Down the road at Coyner Springs, a hotel and cottages were built starting in 1851. A spur of the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad included a station at the springs. Accommodations were described by Cohen as being “furnished with Spartan severity” and also afflicted with “a damp odor that permeated everything.”
Those qualities were probably not noted in the promotional literature.
Just southwest of Coyner Springs, there is a large cluster of springs that feed Glade Creek. The geography suggests a favorable location for a small resort, but none was ever built.
The reason may be that contemporary profits generated from those springs were possibly more steady than any seasonal recreational facility could produce. The source of the income was identified on the deed to the property by the name of the stream that fed into the larger creek.
The stream run was called Stillhouse Branch.
If you’ve been wondering about something, call “What’s on Your Mind?” at 777-6476 or send an email to whatsonyourmind@roanoke.com. Don’t forget to provide your full name (and its proper spelling if by phone) and hometown.
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December 07, 2020 at 08:00AM
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WOYM: Prevalence of healing waters once brought label of 'America’s Sanitarium' to region - Roanoke Times
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