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“It Was Very Warm and Smelt Very Bad”:Warm Springs and the First Bath House in Salt Lake City
“It Was Very Warm and Smelt Very Bad”:Warm Springs and the First Bath House in Salt Lake City
BY DARRELL E. JONES AND W. RANDALL DIXON
Within a few miles north of downtown Salt Lake City, several thermal springs flow from the base of the nearby Wasatch Mountains. Shortly after the arrival of the Mormons to the Great Salt Lake Valley in 1847, one of these springs soon to be known as the Warm Springs, would be used for bathing. In subsequent years, several different bathhouses would be constructed for the thousands of people who came to bathe in the mineral waters and where many learned to swim in the swimming pools that later were built nearby. This paper will provide a brief history of the uses and development of the Warm Springs and the first bath house.
Long before the arrival of the Mormons to the Great Salt Lake Valley, Shoshoni Indians undoubtedly used these thermal springs for a variety of purposes, Brigham Young recalled that as many as "three hundred Indians periodically camped a their Warm Springs traditional camp.” John Nebeker later wrote about events in the winter of 1847-48, when “a great number of Indians came to the Warm Springs suffering from measles. It was a new disease to them, and they didn’t know how to cure it.” The healing qualities of the warm mineral water became one of the major reasons for future visitors to claim the springs cured almost any malady known to man.
A.J.Russell,official photographer of the Union Pacific Railroad, took this photograph about 1869. He was likely photographing the Bath House built in 1865 and perhaps the roof of theTabernacle shown in the far distance.The original Bath House is the long light-colored structure near the right side of the photo.
Utah State Historical Society
The first known white men to have likely visited the thermal springs were fur trappers who were in the area as early as the 1820s. The first known written description of the springs came at the hand of Edwin Bryant who along with co-leader William Russell led a small Californiabound emigrant group, which followed the newly blazed Hastings Cutoff to the California trail in the summer of 1846.The route they followed took them down Weber Canyon and to the south shore of the Great Salt Lake. Near the present-day sand and gravel quarries, Bryant recorded on July 30, 1846, “there is a basin of water some three or four miles in circumference, surrounded by a smooth sandy beach.” Continuing his account:
Turning the point of the mountain, we came to seven warm springs, so strongly impregnated with sulphur as to have left a deposit of this mineral in some places several feet in depth. These springs gush out near the foot of a high precipice, composed of conglomerate rock and a bluish sandstone.The precipice seems to have been uplifted by some subterraneous convulsion. The temperature of the water in the basins was about 90º.The water of most of them was bitter and nauseous.
In this and other early written records it is often difficult to identify which of the several springs the writers were referring to. Only when the water temperature was noted can the spring be positively identified. The temperature at the Hot Springs was generally recorded at about 120 degrees, while the temperature at the Warm Springs was at about 100 degrees, the latter preferred by bathers. 6 One, perhaps exaggerated experience, vividly indicates the difference. William Chandless, a wealthy English traveler and writer, while visiting Salt Lake City in 1855, reported that at the hottest spring,“a Gentile, taking this for the warm spring where people used to bathe, said ‘Well, I can bathe wherever the d—-d Mormons can,’ and jumping in, was scalded to death.” Chandless visited the Warm Springs and wrote of it: “The water is conveyed through pipes to supply warm baths, and such baths, despite their rude construction and the occasional broken bottles in them, as are not to be enjoyed everywhere.”
When the first company of Mormon emigrants arrived in the Salt Lake Valley in July 1847, it did not take long for them to discover the thermal springs near the site chosen for their city, nor did it take them long to come to understand the therapeutic value the springs offered. On July 22, Erastus Snow and seven others while exploring the north end of the valley visited the thermal springs. Snow later recorded,“our little exploring company took down the valley a few miles towards the Salt Lake, bearing a little west of north, and struck a salt marsh fed by numerous warm springs that came out of the base of the mountains on the east.” The party lacked a thermometer but Snow found the water at the hottest spring “about right for scalding hogs” and decided that “the springs are the greatest facilities for a steam doctor I ever saw.” He noted that “a stone, in the center of the stream before the aperture in the rocks, seemed to say, this is the seat for the patient.” He tried sitting on the rock,“but [I] had little desire to remain long upon it.” He concluded that “these springs are very strongly impregnated with salt and sulphur and some of them with copperas [sic] and other ingredients.”
Four days later, on July 26, a party consisting of Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, Willard Richards, George A. Smith, Wilford Woodruff, Ezra T. Benson, Albert Carrington, and William Clayton explored the country north of the future city site, and visited both the Hot and Warm Springs. Clayton’s description of the Hot Springs clearly indicates why it did not become nearly as popular as the Warm Springs:
Heber C. Kimball reported that “Elders Richards, Benson and myself bathed in the warm springs. We found it very pleasant and refreshing.” 10 Clayton recorded that Richards and Benson were already bathing when Kimball arrived. “Although wet with perspiration, he took off his clothes and plunged in and found the effects very pleasant and beneficial.” Although Clayton did not bathe on that occasion, his opinion of the thermal water was not as glowing as Kimball’s. He then added “the smell arising from it [the water] is truly nauseating and sickly, though generally supposed to be in no way unhealthy.”
Thomas Bullock recorded on the same day (presumably after Richards had bathed in the Warm Springs) that “Dr. Richards recommended me to go . . . to the hot Mineral Spring to bathe for the benefit of my health.” It was clear that these earliest visitors were as interested in the healing power of the Warm Springs as they were about its cleansing or refreshing benefits. Bullock first went to the Hot Springs, which he referred to as the “largest” of the mineral springs. Confirming what others had reported, he wrote “the water was so very hot that I was unable to bear my fingers in four or five seconds.” He then went to the Warm Springs (which he described as “hot”) and bathed in it. His only comment was “it was very warm & smelt very bad.” Later in the fall of 1847, Bullock in a letter to the church’s publication in England, the Millennial Star, confirmed the salutary benefits of time spent in the warm springs. “[E]very person who was sick that bathed in it recovered…those who once bathe[ed] there want to go again.”
Bullock initiated some of the first improvements to the Warm Springs. After first bathing there on July 26, he recorded the next day that “Jackson Shupe & T. Bullock cleaned out the Spring this evening.” Six days later, more extensive improvements were made by Bullock and others:
He later noted that the spring was “a beautiful warm sulphur spring, which I dug out and made a most beautiful bathing place. The brethren were pleased to name it after me, on account of my labor.” His name never stuck to the Warm Springs, however.
As the popularity of the Warm Springs increased, numerous comments were made concerning the medicinal and relaxing results from bathing in the water. Robert Bliss, a Mormon Battalion veteran returning from California, wrote, “Today visited the Warm Springs and bathed, which was a great relief to me after traveling in the dust so long. The water is just warm enough to bathe in; it seems at first too warm to be immersed in but after the body is wet and the first sensation is over, it is delightful.” Others were equally delighted with their bathing experiences in the Warm Springs.William Clayton, who first saw the Warm Springs on July 26, waited eight days before actually bathing. He found “the effects very refreshing and beneficial.” Patty Bartlett Sessions visited the Warm Springs on September 27, 1847, just three days after arrival in the valley, and noted that “it is a splended place.” John Bennion said,“It is the best place I ever saw for bathing and is said to be very good for health." Daniel Spencer noted that the water was “as warm as common dish water.”
John Taylor, a member of the second company of emigrants to the Great Salt Lake Valley, noted sufficient water flowing from the springs to power a mill.
The sawmill Taylor noted was built by brothers Archibald and Robert Gardner.Archibald wrote that “due to the water being warm there was not sufficient power to turn the wheel [although] three boards were turned out.” Robert Gardner remembered a more realistic reason for the failure of the mill than water temperature.“We had been used to running mills in Canada with heavy streams and a low head of a fall say from 2 to 8 feet, and we thought a very little water would do, but we had too little there [at the spring] and we could not make lumber.”
Road weary travelers to California welcomed a refreshing bath at the Warm Springs. William Johnston was one such visitor in June 1849. “The rock basin into which the spring empties had been hollowed out to a size sufficient to allow a dozen or more persons to bathe at one time. A cloud of vapor hung continually over the pool.”While there he “met several men and children bathing, and learned that they visited it with great frequency. The Mormons, we were told, have great faith in the efficacy of the spring for healing, and as a panacea for diseases in general.” He noted that a bathing schedule had been posted at the Warm Springs. The Church, he wrote,“governs matters secular as well as spiritual, on Tuesdays and Fridays women only are allowed to bathe here and the men on the other days of the week.” He also commented on a feeling not shared by other bathers when “for about an hour after coming out felt a sickening sensation, not an unusual effect, I was told, but one which can be avoided by bathing before sunrise or after sunset.”
Another visitor to the Warm Springs in 1848 Mary Ellen Kimball described how the water “proceeds from the base of an exceeding high mountain, through an aperture about eighteen inches in diameter, and of that heat that it requires us to go into it by degrees.”
John Hudson, one of the thousands who headed for the gold fields of California in 1849, but instead remained in the valley, wrote of the Warm Springs: “The water is strong of sulphur and is said to be healthful. When you first get in the water it is uncomfortable warm, but after a minute or two it is delightful.” He was a bit skeptical of the healing properties of the spring when two of his companions who were ailing were given a bath: “We laid them on the edge of the pool, their heads on a pillow of pebbles covered with a blanket.We rubbed them down and then left them to soak. They both expressed themselves as feeling much better. I believe they did, but I could not help suspecting that a part of the satisfaction expressed was to make us feel better for our trouble.” The Warm Springs, he continued, flows “very strong and forms a pool about twenty feet square and fifteen inches deep. The water is clear as crystal. The bottom is covered with pebble stones of a delightful greenish hue.”
Thomas Bullock conducted an extensive survey of the source of the spring water in December 1849. “[I] went up to the Warm Spring—into the hole until I came to two branches about 30 or 40 feet from the entrance.” William Kelly described “the stream as it gushed from the hill-side in a thick volume.” Another writer found “an immense rush of water, forming large pools by the side of the road and smoking as if ready to boil; and the ground coated with the salts with which the water is impregnated.” A later writer recalled that the stream was “as large as a man’s thigh.”
From these and many other early accounts of bathing in the warm spring, it appears health, relaxation, and cleanliness, in descending order, were reasons for entering the water. For well over the next century, at least two of these factors, health and relaxation, continued to draw people to the Warm Springs.
Frequent bathing for cleanliness was not a widespread habit for most people in the middle of the nineteenth century. Although one writer has stated that “by the 1830s bathing was probably universal among wealthy, cultivated urban families, increasingly common among the aspiring uppermiddling in cities, accepted by a steadily growing number of families in rural center villages, and still fairly rare in the countryside,” it is likely that the early residents in the Salt Lake Valley would fit into the latter category. Indoor plumbing did not become common until later in the nineteenth century, so bathing facilities in homes consisted of stove-heated water (or maybe cold water) in a portable tub on the kitchen floor, in which several members of the household may have used the same water for the “Saturday night bath.” Public bathing facilities, such as the Warm Springs and later the Bath House, were, therefore, quite popular wherever found.
There is little mention in diaries and journals about what, if anything, early bathers at the warm springs wore when they entered the water. Some privacy was provided when bathing schedules were posted for men and women who bathed on different days of the week. William Clayton noted that Willard Richards “took off his clothes and plunged in.” The only other person to discuss the subject was Margaret Clawson who later recalled:“The banks of the pool was our dressing rooms, without any kind of shelter.We have gone in winter in a sleigh, and dressed in the same old room, with snow on the ground. Oh, my, didn’t we dress quickly. Anyway, we had bare ground to stand on, as the steam melted the snow quite a little distance around the spring.” On February 17, 1849, the High Council of Salt Lake City appointed Brigham Young a committee of one to erect a public bathhouse at the Warm Springs. Six days previous to this announcement, James Hendricks had been called as the bishop of the Salt Lake Nineteenth Ward. Its boundaries included the Warm Springs. Apparently, acting as proprietor of the bathhouse was part of his duties as bishop. He and his family later lived in a small house adjacent to the bathhouse, and helped with the construction of the house and the bathhouse. The bathhouse was one of several construction projects undertaken as a “Public Works” project of the church.
On July 1, 1850, the Deseret News announced that “THE BATH HOUSE is now open for the accommodation of gentlemen.” It is unknown if this indicated that women were not yet accepted at the Bath House. The Bath House was built approximately four-tenths of a mile south of the actual spring, about where present-day Reed Avenue intersects with 300 West Street. The Bath House was dedicated on November 27, 1850, with what the Deseret News described as “the festival of consecrating the baths for the healing of the sick, and to open the house for the benefit of the public.” 41 Carriages soon began operating between the Warm Springs and various locations in the city. In addition to warm sulphur water carried from the spring in log pipes, fresh water was brought in a ditch to the Bath House from City Creek Canyon. Brigham Young was quoted as saying, “The Bath House, near the Warm Springs, is now completed, and will, it is confidently believed, ‘ere long, become a source of revenue to the state.” The Bath House soon became the location for many social events.
Thomas Bullock reported that on Christmas Day 1850, a “ball at the Bath House continued all night till 7 am of the 26th.” The first of many marriages performed in the Bath House was that of James Gemmell and Elizabeth Hendricks (daughter of the proprietor) on December 27, 1850. New Year’s Day 1851, there was a “large party at the Bath House.” The Bath House was also used as a meeting hall for the Nineteenth Ward until December 1852, when meetings were shifted to a newly built school house.
Deseret News March 22,1851.
Apparently there was a small log house for the proprietor and a larger adobe building that housed the bathing facilities with a room where parties, weddings, and other gatherings were held. Water from the spring to the wooden bathing tubs was conveyed in wooden pipes. On March 22, 1851, proprietor James Hendricks placed an advertisement in the Deseret News, defining the “terms for privilege of the Baths.” Hendricks’ wife, Drusilla Doris Hendricks, wrote that the bath house “contained twelve rooms, six on each side and a large room in front.” Visitor, Jean Rio Baker, however, only noted that the bath house “contains eight commodious baths.” Hendricks indicated that there was a “large room in front.” This obviously refers to the room in which social events described above were held.
The Bath House soon became the main site for large social gatherings in Salt Lake Valley, including a grand military ball given by Professor Ballo and his band in December 1851. Perhaps the second marriage at the Bath House was that of Rachel Woolley to Joseph M. Simmons in December as well. On March 31, 1852, Lorenzo Brown recorded: “PM went to a picnic party at the Bath House. Three dancing schools were present. It went off in tolerable order.” At least everything was “tolerable” until Brown “caught a chap pilfering my eatables.”
A mere two years after the dedication of the Bath House, it began falling into disrepair. Mrs. B. G. Ferris, wife of Benjamin G. Ferris, Secretary of the Territory, paid a visit to the Broadside, May 2, 1853. “bathing-house” in November 1852, and found it “very much dilapidated—the doors from their hinges, and the tubs leaking—and it was even difficult to secure the necessary privacy.” Ferris also wrote that it was “originally intended for a hotel." It is strange that only two years after dedication, the Bath House was in such terrible condition. The decline was probably the result of the Hendricks family moving from the premises sometime in 1852.
A year later during the winter of 1852-53, Colonel J. C. Little, who had recently taken charge of the Bath House replacing the original proprietor James Hendricks, converted the Bath House into a hotel. In May 1853, Little took out an advertisement in the Deseret News, and distributed a handbill proclaiming “New Arrangements at the United States Hotel.” The historical record is unclear but apparently Little added a new bathing feature to the hotel as well. Thomas Bullock noted on several occasions in the summer of 1854 “shower baths” at the hotel and that they were “new,” perhaps indicating that they were not completed at the time the hotel was otherwise ready.
Oliver B. Huntington, an employee at this establishment in 1853-54, described the hotel as being “very large and respectable…and had the only license for retailing liquor in the city. There was also a very extensive bathing operation in connexion with the hotel.”
Apparently the hotel was not successful and within a short time it was converted to another purpose. In the fall of 1855, the First Presidency of the LDS Church on a trip to Cache County passed the Bath House and discovered that it was now the A. H. Raleigh and Golding Tannery. Dining and entertainment were discontinued, but “warm and cold baths” were still being advertised.The account also noted “that the pump logs leading from the warm springs to the Bath House were very much out of repair, as illustrated by the frequent jets of water seen spouting up several feet into the air.” Within another three years the Bath House was nearly deserted. A visitor in June 1858 reported:
Another visitor wrote that the bath house “like all else here at this time, has been broken up and left in ruins.”
The Salt Lake City Council was obviously aware of the condition of the Bath House in July 1859, when they granted John Tobin use of the Warm Springs, including erecting a new Bath House. 61 It was soon reported:
Apparently Tobin did not do much about as the Children’s Museum of erecting the new bath house. When English traveler and writer Richard Burton visited Salt Lake City in 1860, he wrote of the dilapidated facility:
There are likely several reasons why the Bath House declined so rapidly after having been as popular earlier. James Hendricks, the first proprietor of the Bath House and bishop of his ward (a position which occupied considerable time), may thus have been affected in his ability to properly manage the operations of the Bath House. As a hotel, it probably failed as Burton noted, because the emigrants “soon learned to prefer more central quarters.” A third reason for failure may have been because of the tannery established nearby. The smell from a tannery was notorious for being obnoxious and certainly could have negatively impacted visitors.
For the next four years little was done to improve the condition of the Bath House, although several petitioners to the City Council offered to do so. The proposals offered were not acceptable and in November 1864, the city fathers determined that the city would have to take the responsibility of making the much needed improvements at the Warm Springs. During the next decade a new Bath House and other facilities were constructed approximately two-tenths of a mile north of the original Bath House, about at the site of the water fountain in the current Warm Springs Park.
In 1875, the City Council decided that it no longer wanted direct control of the Bath House, and for the next four decades, the Bath House and associated features were operated under various leases. The third bath house, known as the White Sulphur Baths, was constructed in 1891 by the lessees Henry Barnes and Edward Byrne. Salt Lake City resumed control of the Warm Springs in 1916 and in 1921-22 yet another building was constructed nearby by Salt Lake City. For the next decade or more the new bathing facility operated by the city’s parks department was known as Warm Springs Municipal Baths. In 1932 the facility underwent another name change: Wasatch Warm Springs Plunge. In 1947, the use of warm spring water was discontinued, and culinary water was used until the building was closed in 1976.The building became the Children’s Museum of Utah in 1981.
In addition to the Warm Springs and its various bath houses, water from the thermal springs was also used by at least four other establishments in the area. Beck’s Hot Springs, located about two miles north of Warm Springs, was developed by mining magnate John Beck;Wasatka Springs, located across the street from Warm Springs; and two different Salt Lake Sanitariums located in downtown Salt Lake City, existed for many years using water piped from the various thermal springs for uses similar to the Warm Springs.
So what happened to the original run down, dilapidated first Bath House, located several hundred yards south of the old Children’s Museum building on Beck Street? Although the date of razing the original bathing facilities is unknown, at least a portion of the building was converted to a residence. Walter Eli Wilcox, an employee of Brigham Young, and Wilcox’s family lived in the converted residence from 1866 to 1876. Sometime during this ten-year period, ownership of the original building had passed to Brigham Young as Trustee-in Trust for the Church, and in January 1876 Young asked Wilcox to “find some other residence at your early convenience. I am desirous of devoting my house in which you reside to educational purposes,” explained Young. It is not known if the building was ever used for educational purposes but after Young’s death in 1877, the block on which the Bath House was located was subdivided for residential development. A street, which became Reed Avenue, was laid out where the Bath House had been, thus ending the existence of the facilities which for years held such a prominent place in the hearts of many residents and visitors who had enjoyed not only the bathing, but many other social events there.
Time, construction of Victory Road to the east above the Warm Springs, and other developments have significantly altered the area. A paved walkway leads from the former Children’s Museum about two-hundred yards north to what remains of the spring. It is a far cry from what the early visitors must have seen.The smell and temperature are the same, but the flow is quite small compared to earlier descriptions, certainly those that recorded the flow could run a saw mill. Salt Lake City and local citizen groups have restored what is now known as Warm Springs and the surrounding wetlands, and installed walkways and interpretive panels which tell some of the history, ecology, and geology of the springs. Bathing is no longer permitted, although there are reports that homeless individuals are occasionally seen bathing there. Perhaps this is a fitting epithet for what served for just over a century as one of the most popular locations for bathing and swimming in the Salt Lake City area. Although it “was very warm and smelt very bad,” many still have fond memories of the Warm Springs, and the last incarnation of the Bath House.
NOTES
Darrell E. Jones is a retired United States Naval officer and a retired civil engineer. He currently serves as a volunteer research assistant at the LDS Museum of Church History and Art. W. Randall Dixon has a longtime interest in Salt Lake City history and works as an archivist for the Church History Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
1 Deseret News,April 15,1871.Mary Ellen Kimball,upon arriving in the Salt Lake Valley in the fall of 1847,wrote “Indians were camped near the Hot Springs north of the Fort.Solomon F.Kimball quoting Sarah’s diary,“Our Pioneer Boys,” Improvement Era 11 (August 1908):734.
2 John Nebeker,“Early Justice in Utah,” Utah Historical Quarterly 3 (July 1930):87.See also Hubert Howe Bancroft’s History of Utah:1540-1887 (San Francisco:The History Company,1890),278.In describing the same circumstance,Bancroft recorded,“although they [Indians] tried to deal with it by bathing in the warm springs ...large numbers of them died.”
3 In 1846,Lansford Hastings promoted a shorter trail to California,which left the Oregon Trail at Fort Bridger in Wyoming,continued southwest to the south end of the Great Salt Lake,across the salt desert of present day Utah,thence across Nevada and the Sierra Nevada Mountains.Several companies of emigrants accepted Hastings’route that year,including the ill-fated Donner Party.The Mormon emigration of 1847 followed this trail into the Salt Lake Valley.
4 J.Roderic Korns and Dale L.Morgan,ed., West from Fort Bridger:The Pioneering of the Immigrant Trails across Utah 1846-1850,revised and updated by Will Bagley and Harold Schindler (Logan:Utah State University Press,1994),80.This body of water was later known as Hot Springs Lake,remnants of which can still be found in the vicinity of I-15 and Beck Street north of Salt Lake City.
5 The two springs soon began to be identified with the plural and capitalized Warm Springs and Hot Springs.
6 Joseph T.Kingsbury,“Mineral Springs,” Contributor 4 (October 1882):58-60.Kingsbury found that the highest temperature measured at the hot spring was 126º,whereas the temperature at the warm spring varied from 98º to 104º during a six month period.
7 William Chandless, A Visit to Salt Lake;being A Journey Across the Plains and a Residence in the Mormon Settlements at Utah (Ann Arbor:Xerox University Microfilms,1975),223.The “hot spring”that became the second most popular of the thermal springs was for many years known as Beck’s Hot Springs after John Beck,a wealthy mine owner,who built the first bathhouse there.It was located approximately two miles north of the warm spring,about where Beck Street joins I-15.
8 Erastus Snow Journal,July 22,1847,as quoted in Andrew Karl Larson, Erastus Snow:The Life of a Missionary and Pioneer for the Early Mormon Church (Salt Lake City:University of Utah Press,1971),162. This description fits the hottest of the springs,which soon became known as the “Hot Springs.”
9 Clayton Family Association, William Clayton’s Journal:A Daily Record of the Journey of the Original Company of “Mormon”Pioneers from Nauvoo,Illinois,to the Valley of the Great Salt Lake (Salt Lake City: Deseret News,1921),323.
10 Orson F.Whitney, Life of Heber C.Kimball (Salt Lake City:Kimball Family,1888),378.
11 Clayton Family Association, William Clayton’s Journal,324
12 Will Bagley,ed., The Pioneer Camp of the Saints:the 1846 and 1847 Mormon Trail Journals of Thomas Bullock (Spokane:The Arthur H.Clark Company,1997),238 .
13 Thomas Bullock to Orson Spencer,January 4,1848,in The Millennial Star 10 (April 15,1848):8,118.
14 Bagley,ed., Pioneer Camp of the Saints,240.
15 Ibid.,247.
16 Thomas Bullock to Franklin D.Richards,in Millennial Star 10:2,30.William Clayton also referred to the spring as “Bullock’s bathing place.”See Clayton Family Association,Clayton’s Journal,340.
17 Robert Stanton Bliss Diary,August 1846-January 1848,Church History Library,Family and Church History Department,The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,Hereafter the LDS Church History Library.This is the first instance we have found that Warm Springs is capitalized and the plural is used.
18 Clayton Family Association, Clayton’s Journal,340.
19 Donna Toland Smart,ed., Mormon Midwife:The 1846-1888 Diaries of Patty Bartlett Sessions (Logan: Utah State University Press,1997),100.
20 Letter dated March 5,1848,from John Bennion to his sister Hannah,in Harden Bennion, The Bennion Family of Utah,2nd ed.(Salt Lake City:[Bennion Family Association],1981),1:32-35.
21 Daniel Spencer to Brother Grove,October 5,1848,LDS Church History Library.
22 Millennial Star,10:21,325..
23 See Delila Gardner Hughes, The Life of Archibald Gardner (West Jordan:The Archibald Gardner Family Genealogical Association,1939),42
24 Robert Gardner, Robert Gardner:Utah Pioneer 1847;written by himself,January 7,1884 (Salt Lake City:G.Gardner,1934).
25 Wm.G.Johnston, Overland to California (Oakland:Biobooks,1948),122-23.
26 Quoted in Littell’s Living Age 21 (April,May,June,1849),165.
27 Brigham D.Madsen,ed., A Forty Niner in Utah:Letters and Journal of John Hudson (Salt Lake City: Tanner Trust Fund and University of Utah Library,1981),83-85.
28 Thomas Bullock,Historian’s Office Journal,December 2,1849,LDS Church History Library.Cited hereafter as Historian’s Office Journal.We found no evidence that anyone could actually enter into the mountain at the warm spring.William Clayton,in his original journal entry,described the hot spring opening:“there is a hole about four foot wide and half a yard high from the top to the surface of the water.”See William Clayton Journal,holograph,July 26,1847,LDS Church History Library.George D. Smith,ed., An Intimate Chronicle:the Journals of William Clayton (Salt Lake City:Signature Books in association with Smith Research Associates,1993) erroneously copied Clayton’s journal entry to read “a yard high.”Could Bullock have actually entered the hot spring instead of the warm spring?
29 William Kelly, Excursion to California over the Prairie,Rocky Mountains,and Great Sierra Nevada;with a Stroll Through the Diggings and Ranches of that Country (London:Chapman and Hall,1851),227.
30 Mrs.B.G.Ferris, The Mormons at Home;With some Incidents of Travel from Missouri to California,1852-3. In a Series of Letters (New York City:Dix & Edwards,1856),118-20.
31 Albert D.Richardson, Beyond the Mississippi:From the Great River to the Great Ocean.Life and Adventure on the Prairies,Mountains,and Pacific Coast (Hartford:American Publishing Company,1867),346.
32 Jack Larkin,“Baths,Brush Heads,Beards,and Two-Pronged Forks:An Unconventional Look at the Details of Everyday History,” Old Sturbridge Visitor,(Summer 1997):6-7.
33 See Patricia Lauber, What You Never Knew About Tubs,Toilets,& Showers (New York:Simon & Schuster Books,2001),and Richard L.and Claudia L.Bushman,“The Early History of Cleanliness in America,” The Journal of American History 74 (March 1988):1213-38.
34 Clayton Family Association, Clayton’s Journal,324.
35 “Rambling Reminiscences of Margaret Gay Judd Clawson Talking of ‘Those Days,’”typescript, microfilm,40,LDS Church History Library.
36 Journal History,February 17,1849,1.The following day,Hosea Stout recorded that “a law is passed to erect a bathing house at the Warm Springs.”Juanita Brooks,ed., On the Mormon Frontier:The Diary of Hosea Stout,1848-1862,(Salt Lake City:University of Utah Press,1964),343.
37 Daughters of Utah Pioneers,“Firm in the Faith,” Our Pioneer Heritage 20 (1977),267-78.This is an edited version of Drusilla Doris Hendrick’s journal.Cited hereafter as Hendricks Journal.
38 As the fledgling community in the Salt Lake Valley grew,it was essential that cooperative effort by many accomplished those tasks which individuals could not complete alone.For instance,planting of crops,digging canals and ditches,building boweries,etc.,were done as community efforts.As time went on,Brigham Young,in order to provide work for the hundreds and then thousands of new arrivals in the valley,organized a Public Works Department,which within a few short years constructed among others,a wall around the Temple Block,the Council House,the Old Tabernacle,and the Bathhouse.See Leonard J. Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom:An Economic History of the Latter-day Saints,1830-1900 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,1958),54-55,108-12.
39 From this time on,the first bathhouse and all those that followed were noted as The Bath House.
40 Deseret News,January 11,1851,188.It was reported that Brigham Young addressed those present “stating that the house was built by the public funds,but it would have to be supported from the avails of the baths.”The newspaper editorialized that “we suppose that those who visit the house,should do it in the spirit of prayer,giving thanks unto the Lord for all things,with their liberal offerings of gold and silver, for the support of the house.”
41 Fourth General Epistle of the Church,dated September 27,1850,in James R.Clark,ed., Messages of the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,1833-1964,(Salt Lake City:Bookcraft, 1965-1971),2:56.This reference refers to “visitants”to the “Baths.”
42 Journal History,October 24,1850,1.Fresh,cold water was apparently for culinary purposes in the Bath House and adjoining buildings.
43 Brigham Young,in governor’s message to the legislature,December 2,1850.Quoted in Deseret News, January 11,1851,186.
44 Historian’s Office Journal,December 25,1850,32.
45 Family Group Sheet,LDSFamily History Library.
46 Journal History,January 1,1851,1.
47 “Nineteenth Ward,Salt Lake Stake,Historical Record,”LDS Church History Library .
48 See also Jedediah M.Grant,“Three Letters to the New York Herald,March 9,1852,”in Gene A. Sessions,ed., Mormon Thunder:a Documentary History of Jedediah Morgan Grant (Champaign:University of Illinois Press,1982),323.Andrew J.Russell was the official photographer for construction of the Union Pacific Railroad,1867-69.As part of his photographic history,he made a number of images of scenes in and around Salt Lake City.In photographing the Warm Springs Bath House about 1869,his camera captured the image of the original bath house in the background.There are several early sketches of the buildings.Before the common use of aerial photographs,artists made “bird’s eye view”sketches.“Bird’s Eye View of Salt Lake City,Utah Territory,1870”,drawn by Augustus Koch;“Salt Lake City,1875,”E.S. Glover,LDS Church History Library.
49 Hendricks Journal,267.
50 Emma Nielsen Mortensen, Two Mormon Pioneers:History of Alva Benson;Diary of Jean Rio Baker (Hyrum:Downs Printing,1986),192.Thomas Bullock gave some indication of the size of the tubs when he wrote that he “and Brigham Young bathed in the same tub,and W.McBride bathed in the other [tub] in the same room.”Historian’s Office Journal,December 21,1850,31.
51 Journal History,December 12,1851,1;Diary of Rachel Woolley,in Kate B.Carter,comp., Heart Throbs of the West (Salt Lake City:Daughters of Utah Pioneers),11,165.
52 Diary of Lorenzo Brown,March 31,1852,typescript,LDS Church History Library.
53 Ferris, Mormons at Home,121.
54 Hendricks Journal,267-8.
55 Deseret News,May 2,1853.
56 See Historian’s Office Journal entries June 13,1854,30;June 22,1854,34;,and July 5,1854,37.
57 “Diary and Reminiscence of Oliver B.Huntington,”April 2,1853,typescript,LDS Church History Library,83.
58 Journal History October 20,1855,1.In March 1855,Alonzo Hazelton Raleigh and Robert Golding entered into a partnership to tan and manufacture leather,boots,shoes,and other leather items.In July 1860,Raleigh sold out his interest to Golding,who continued to operate the business for a short time.See Alonzo Raleigh,Journal,March 6,1855,99,and July 28,1860,246.
59 Letter from an anonymous writer to the editor dated June 24,1858, New York Weekly Tribune,August 7,1858,reprinted in The Church News,August 22,1981,5.
60 Letter from William Simonston to the editor,dated June 26,1858,in New York Times.August 3,1858.
61 Salt Lake City Council Minutes,July 7:48,July 15:52,and July 22,1859:56,microfilm,LDS Church History Library.
62 The Mountaineer,(Salt Lake City ) September 3,1859,6.
63 Richard Burton, The City of the Saints and Across the Rocky Mountains to California,ed.Fawn Brodie (New York City:Alfred A.Knopf,1963),236-37.Burton recorded that the hotel was planned as a stopping place for emigrants to California and Oregon,but failed because the emigrants found suitable quarters in central Salt Lake City.
64 Ibid,137.
65 See Salt Lake City Council Minutes,November 10,1863,164;March 24,237;April 5,239,243;and November 1,1864),333.
66 Salt Lake Herald April 15,and May 14,1891.Also Salt Lake City Council minutes January 20,1891.
67 Beck’s Hot Springs existed from the 1880s until 1950,when the building was destroyed by fire. Wasatka Springs began as a bottling works in the 1890s,added bathing facilities in the 1920s,and closed in the 1940s.The first Salt Lake Sanitarium (also known as the Natatorium) was erected in 1889 on the west side of West Temple,between Main and Second South Streets.Thermal water was piped from one of the warm springs and blended with salt water from the marshes northwest of the city.The sanitarium was discontinued at this site about 1893.The building was later used for a brief period as the National Guard armory,before being demolished for the terminal of the Bamberger Railroad in1913.Abravanel Hall now occupies the site.Under the name Salt Lake Sanitarium Baths,a new building was erected on the north side of Third South between Main and West Temple Streets in 1893.“The San”as it was known,remained in business until 1919.A portion of the building was used as a hotel for a few years,and then demolished for other commercial buildings.
68 It is unclear whether these living accommodations were part of the bath house,or a separate building.Drusilla Hendricks noted that when they moved to the Warm Springs,“We built a log house first, then a large adobe,then the bathhouse.”Hendricks Journal,267.
69 Salt Lake City Directories of 1867,1869,and 1874,and United States Federal Census,1870 (Salt Lake City,Nineteenth Ward),707:48.
70 Brigham Young to Walter Wilcox,Brigham Young Letter Book,January 15,1876,LDS Church History Library.When the Bath House was built as a public works project in 1850,it was obviously Church property.It is unclear whether the building which was used as a residence in the 1870s was part of the Bath House or was a separate building as recorded in Drusilla Hendricks Reminiscence.It is also unclear if Brigham Young came into possession of the residence as Trustee in Trust of the Church,or as an individual.
71 Old Bath House property plat ca 1887.Trustee-in-Trust,Real Estate Memorandum,1872-1883, Church History Library.
On June 9,2005,a transient was found dead in the Warm Springs pool. Salt Lake Tribune,June 10, 2005.
