The Springs of Steamboat by Dagny McKinley

Author:Dagny McKinley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing Inc.
Published: 2013-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

A key hung on a nail outside. The bather took the key, and when he left, he put it back on the nail. People came from as far away as Hahn’s Peak, twenty-five miles north, to use the spring.

At the time, while bathing was free, other goods ran a much higher price. According to a grocery list that was preserved from the time and reprinted in the Pilot, “a quart of syrup cost $1.25; coffee, 1 lbs., $1.60; pork, 4½ lbs., $4.15; sugar, 2 lbs., $1.35; sack of flour, $26. With luck, $10 could get a homesteader through the winter as long as they had wild game to supplement their supplies.”

In 1887, logger Horace Suttle, who owned a sawmill nearby, constructed a newer frame over the bathhouse. It was simple and had one room but was a change for the better. Two years later, three additional rooms were added.

In 1909, ownership of the bathhouse was sold by the Steamboat Springs Company to the Steamboat Springs Town and Quarry Company, a group of men from Nebraska. They began construction on the bathhouse, which was big news. The Pilot reported on the Albert Ohamn force of men making “rapid progress.” According to the article, a rock crusher and cement mixer were shipped to town by the Town and Quarry Company. The goal was to have the renovations completed by July 1 in time for the national holiday. What a different July 4 this would be compared to the one first celebrated by the Crawfords with the Ute Indians during their first year in Steamboat.

An investment of $50,000 was made to transform the spring into a recreation area. A new eighty-four- by one-hundred-square-foot bathhouse was built of stone from the surrounding area, as was an outdoor pool. The minerals from the springs worked away at cement and wood. During the first year, revenue was expected to only be about $187. As Lulita Crawford observed, “It seemed as though the waters fought against being tamed.”

The Pilot article “Colorful History of Local Swimming Pool Had Its Start Back in 1884” reprinted an account of one of the first years after the train came to town:

The year 1909 brought many good things for Steamboat Springs, giving this town an impetus and growth which will forever clinch its position as the metropolis and commercial center of Northwestern Colorado. The railroad came early in the year, placing us within a few hours of the center of the commercial life of the state. The long-needed hotel was built. The bath house and pool, splendid pieces of work in themselves, are only at the beginning of the work of improving the springs and making them useful and attractive to man. Many fine business blocks and scores of attractive residences were completed, the total building record showing close to a quarter of a million dollars. And not the least in importance to the town was the development of the strawberry industry to a paying basis and the certainty of its wonderful expansion in the next few years.

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