HOT SPRINGS, HEALERS, INHALATORIUMS
Quetzal
100 Years of Spas and Springs
International
Beauty Salon
by Gene Fowler
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2010
July 2 - Chili Cook-off and Dance at the Post Park
Sept. 17 & 18 - West Fest Cabrito Cook Off at Post Park
Oct. 15 - Marathon to Marathon
Nov. 13 - Cowboy Social at Ritchey Brothers Building • 3 - 6 pm
Dec. 3 - Fiesta de Noche Buena,
All the shops on Hwy 90 • 6 - 9 pm
18
ew who visit the Trans-
Pecos country will fail
to observe that the salu-
brious atmosphere can prove a
tonic for the mind, body and
soul. Rancher A.G. Goynes cer-
tainly did. In the 1880s, Goynes
coined a nifty slogan for Van
Horn: “This Town Is So
Healthy, We Had to Shoot a
Man to Start a Cemetery.”
According to local legend, he
soon proved his point, tragical-
ly. Even before the slogan went
up on a banner in the Clark
Hotel, Goynes lay dead, shot by
his brother-in-law in a dispute
over a watering hole.
Watering holes, of course,
were very important. Not only
did spring water sustain life for
Native Americans, settlers and
soldiers, but the water that
spurted and gurgled from cer-
tain springs was said to possess
uncommon medicinal proper-
ties. Like many who trekked to
West Texas, malaria sufferer
J.O. Langford sought a more
healthful climate than that of
his native Mississippi. While
hunting for homestead acreage
in 1909, Langford overheard
two men in an Alpine hotel dis-
cussing mineral springs on the
Rio Grande.
“They’ll cure anything,” in -
sisted one of the men. “Stomach
trouble, rheumatism, all sorts
of skin diseases ... Indians were
using them long before white
men ever got out this way.”
Langford filed on a riparian
patch of borderland, moved his
young family to the Rio Grande
and soon restored his mortal
frame with a course of baths
and quaffs. The powerful waters
weakened him at first, but as he
continued the regimen, he
brimmed with robust vitality.
“Baths at Boquillas Hot Springs,”
Langford advertised in the
Alpine Avalanche in 1912, “25
cents each or 21 for $5.00.”
Though Big Bend National
Park employees blew up Lang -
ford's bathhouse with ex plosives
in 1947, river trekkers soothe
their sacroiliacs in the hot
Cenizo
First Quarter 2011
Photo courtesy of the author
springs today.
The balm of breathing pris-
tine Trans-Pecos oxygen proved
just as restorative for many pio-
neers. “Let a man travel six
weeks in western Texas,” pro-
claimed an 1871 issue of the
Overland Monthly, “and if he is
not cured ... of whatever ail-
ment he has, it will be because
there is no blood left in him.”
One Walter B. Stevens
praised both healthful elements
after an 1880s tour through the
Davis Mountains, noting that
“there are springs all about
which possess a whole apothe-
cary ship of medical qualities.”
Touting the dry, high-country
atmosphere, Stevens testified,
“it tones up weak lungs and
enables the asthmatic to whoop
and enjoy life.”
Battling tuberculosis with
sunshine and air, consumptives
whooped and enjoyed from San
Antonio to El Paso. A tuber -
cular named Rudolf Eicke -
meyer observed in 1894 that the
plaza in El Paso was “daily filled
with people” who shared his
hopes of an atmospheric cure.
Two years later, in June
1896, El Paso crowds were elec-
trified by the presence of the
famous faith healer Teresa
Urrea, who had been exiled
from Mexico by Porfirio Diaz
for allegedly inspiring resistance
among the Yaquis and other
indigenous groups.
The new century ushered in
a wave of futuristic medical
apparatuses almost as mysteri-
ous as Teresita’s treatments. In
1906, Trans-Pecos health
trekkers could combat respira-
tory and other ailments with a
newfangled contraption called
the inhalatorium. Will Pruett
established a small resort called
Tent City in the Davis Moun -
tains, where patients could
breathe medicated vapors as
they sat or stood in the phone-
booth-shaped, metal and glass
inhalatorium. Fort Davis histo-
rian Barry Scobee collected the
account of one health-seeker
who claimed he was cured of
tuberculosis by inhaling “fumes
of salt, gum camphor and car-
bolic acid, which were placed
together in a pan of water” in
the inhalatorium.
When Scobee and an amigo
visited the remains of Tent City
in the mid-1930s, they found
the ruins of a large adobe build-
ing, several cabins and the
inhalatorium. Returning a
week later to gather the strange
curio for public display in town,
they found it gone. Years later,
Scobee learned that rancher
Herbert Kokernot had taken
the relic and used it to help plug
up “a dry well, or hole, near the
big house ... to keep cows from
falling into it.”
Will Pruett found it too diffi-
cult to keep Tent City going,
despite the Southern Pacific
Railroad’s efforts to draw
health seekers to the Trans-
Pecos country. The railroad’s
early-1900s, 24-page booklet
entitled A Matter of Health – West
Texas and its Relation to Pulmonary
Complaints lauds “the dry invig-
orating atmosphere of the great
Texas plateau.”
Another remote, life-restor-
ing resort, Kingston Hot
Springs, opened around 1936
on the Rio Grande near
Ruidosa. Annie Kingston
bought the land with the
springs back in 1896, partly to
help her brother, who had