All Things Stewart Mineral Springs
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Mystery of the
Missing Book
a sideways look at
Stewart
Springs History
by Stuart R. Ward
volunteer assistant manager 2000-2002; work/trade bathhouse cold plunge builder/keeper 1999-2014; withdrew all support late 2017
"If you would understand anything, observe its
beginning and its development." -- Aristotle
"...the past is never truly past...it is always tugging up both
its treasures and its tragedies and carrying them insistently into the future."
--Margaret Renkl
Ever wonder why there's never been a book written about so rare a place as Stewart Mineral Springs? On hearing snippets of its colorful history, you'd think surely there must be one out there, but no.
Why not?
After a fair amount of sleuthing and deduction, many likely reasons surfaced. In the course of telling, many scraps of history that were unearthed are shared here for a crazy-quilt journey through Stewart Springs's elusive past -- a most singular, circuitous, sometimes tragic one -- that for better or worse has brought it to be the way it is now.
Writer doesn't claim total objectivity; it's often said such a thing is impossible anyhow. Though trying to avoid over-coloring facts with personal, strong-felt takes, borne of former deep-insider involvement, sometimes it appeared a losing battle. Attempted to corral the most opinionated writings within editorial sidebars, so readers wanting only to glean factual history of place can scroll past them and thus gain a relatively rant-free understanding of the long venerated healing realm that now in such dire straits.
Few Written Records
For starters, in the early 1850s the far west region was still remote. That was the time when Henry Stewart, in grave circumstances, was brought up to the Springs to heal by natives who took pity on him. There obviously weren't people around in pioneer days to document the place's evolution as in more populous regions, or areas that later became populous. Result: to this day there appears a pronounced lack of published source material from which to cobble together an even half-way thorough history of the Springs.
Many invaluable historic records, writings and photos that almost certainly did exist no doubt perished in the fire of July 4, 1948, which destroyed the on-grounds home of founder Stewart's daughter, Katy Stewart Lloyd, and her by-then late husband, former Weed barber and British immigrant Edward Lloyd. They'd been managing the operation since her father's passing in 1914. (More of his story later.)
The fire may well have devastated her so much that she lost heart
to continue service operations much longer. She'd already lost her only offspring, Stewart Lloyd, a year after her husband, in 1941, likely a World War Two casualty. Maybe she'd been thinking of retiring anyhow. In any event she would divest of the place a few years later.
Born in 1880 a few years after her father Henry bought the Springs land, bespectacled Mrs. Lloyd was 68 at the time of the fire -- the age her Jersey-born mom, Julia Newman Stewart, passed over in 1911. She herself would live to be 92, possibly learning through channels how the Goodpasture family in early 1970s rescued the place from what genuine spa fans considered an egregiously inappropriate use of place once assuming their 11-year stewardship. (Goodpasture story later)
After the grounds fire, dedicated momentum was upset and dashed any possible plans to pen some account of her California pioneer father's colorful life and the mystical healing springs to which he devoted his last 39 years.
see old newspaper article reporting fire (check index and scroll down)
Factual Side Story
One Vexed Vanderbilt
George Vanderbilt, son of robber baron Cornelius Vanderbilt, was interested in spas and living in the area. After the fire he offered Katy pots of gold for place. He felt every respectable gazillionaire should have his own rustic mineral spring; it was a then fashionable bauble among the uber-wealthy. He no doubt thought it a fire-sale offer she couldn't refuse.
She refused.
She knew he'd close the place to the public and probably turn it into private playground retreat for the rich and famous -- as his opulent estate on second-choice site a half-mile down the road, built in 1949 for $250,000, indeed became.(An average house went for about $7,200 then.)
In the 1950s and 1960s he'd reportedly hosted such notables as Harry S Truman, Clark Gable, Alan Ladd, Audrey Hepburn, Spencer Tracey, Van Heflin, Ginger Rogers and John Wayne, One imagines at least some of them must've taken the waters, maybe at special off hours time, grounds being only short ways uphill. (If known for sure, management could've posted signs like "Audrey Hepburn Soaked Here" outside various tubrooms.) Van Heflin's daughter, Katy, visited with her dad as a girl and reported finding Vanderbilt a most disagreeable man.
In 1990, Vanderbilt's widow, Louise,then living in Hilo, Hawaii, sold the place for $1.9 million. The mansion burned down the night January 3rd, 2012, on the wings of new owner's restoration work. Old faulty electrical wiring was deemed the likely culprit.
Wagonloads of shame
There are even fewer records than one might expect due to settlers' and descendants' likely calloused feelings and shame over the hell-bent campaign during 1870's national peak of racial/cultural intolerance (Little Big Horn) to wipe out the region's First Nations people. The latter heard white man's war drums, being accused of widespread violence, when likely it was only a stray renegade or two involved in an isolated tragic incident that sparked primitive blood lust in the white settlers. They were hellbent on getting rid of them all.
Tribal members sought refuge fleeing to their hallowed medicine grounds, a place of peaceful healing for time untold, a place where even warring tribal members left weapons on the hillsides to soak under temporary truce. Those unable to get away from outnumbered, out-armed forces that soon found them there, or who chased them down as far away as Castle Lake, were duly massacred. Such a despicable legacy didn't exactly lend the place a suitable subject to wax nostalgic about in conventional regional-history annuals like the Siskiyou Pioneer.
It's likely Henry got wind of the extermination plan and, while refusing to have anything to do with it, was powerless to stop it. One story has it that secret advance warning of the imminent attack leaked out, at least enabling warriors to steel themselves (or, possibly hoping there would be no need to once reaching their sanctuary land; King's Xes) and reportedly spirit women and children to safety across valley to near present-day Carrick Addition off Highway 97 a few miles north of the town of Weed.
If true, perhaps it was Stewart who got word to the peoples who a generation earlier had possibly saved his life. In any event, the ensuing horrific slaughter around current resort grounds cast long and deep shadows over the formerly peaceful sacred place.
Metaphysical thinking holds that, on the subtle, the psychic residue of the massacre linger on the spot to this very day, lending the place its at times somewhat eerie, haunted, almost mournful vibe, one that could seem to crimp any fuller healing experience for visitors. It has no doubt directly contributed to the unfortunate tendency of various legal stewards to get far off track with inappropriate operational schemes and dreams, hindering both the accessibility and ability of mindful visitors to tap into the realm's pronounced purification, healing and rejuvenation properties.
Spring purists believe that pursuing monetized and/or private-minded use of the land results not only in straitjacketing its potential to help greater humanity, but also slows the healing of the grievous invisible wounds yet festering on the land. (More on this below. Also Co-manager's exorcism story [top article] and towards end of More rants & Raves page.)
It's just water,
and the long and winding road
Natural healing methods like taking the waters fell out of fashion during the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. With the advent of materialistic reductionist thinking, to a medical science, divorced from holistic awareness of nature's curative powers, water was just water. Any claims of health benefits by soaking and steaming and drinking mineral water were obviously pure poppycock, shameless attempts to fleece a gullible public and divert them from their own magic pills and eager blades.
Who'd want to read about such an obscure place anyhow? There was only the two-lane State Highway 99 until the advent of 1950s' grand interstate highway system. Unpaved before 1960s, Stewart Springs Road's dirt surface no doubt discouraged all but your more determined and rural-friendly souls. It was paved when it was only due to a county supervisor's efforts after his ailing son was helped by visits to the waters. He felt the place worthy of easier access.
Historic phone number trivia: while well known that Native Americans called gold the yellow stone, less known is that in the 1950s the Springs's phone number prefix was YEllowstone (YEllowstone 8-7955). YE converts to the 93 in current Weed, California area's 938- prefix
Dizzying stewardship
turnover during 28-year period
Once place left the dedicated Stewart family hands of 78 years, from 1876 to 1954, there was frequent turnover of Springs 'owners' up to 1982:
- Sacramento Scottish Rite Masonic Lodge (15 years) - c. 1954-1969
- Group of three Weed, CA businessmen - (brief) c. 1969 - 1971
- Goodpasture family (11 years) - c.1971 - 1981
- Whitney couple (brief) c. 1981 - 1982
Before the long holding by fifth post-Stewart 'owner', San Franciscan John Foggy -- from early 1982 through January 2016, some 34 years, or over twice as long as any other post-Stewart holder -- either none of various legal stewards were around long enough or had any inclination to absorb the place's saga and pen a chronicle. Fragments of history were all we had and appears all we still have. That is, beyond oral histories passed down among tribal members and possibly some elusive treasure-trove of diary journals buried and forgotten in the bottom of an attic trunk in Eerie, Pennsylvania or gathering dust in Smithsonian's vast basement storage acreage. (It's said there's only room to publicly display one percent of the enormous holdings of "America's Attic" at a time.)
Masons - first
post-Stewart stewards
A few years after refusing Vanderbilt's offer, Stewart's daughter, Katy, in an astonishing move, essentially gave the place away. In 1954, the Sacramento (CA) Scottish Rite Masonic Lodge, recipient of her largess, took over, momentously ending an extraordinarily dedicated 78-year Stewart family service run.
* Siskiyou County Historical Society in a May 2012 newsletter reported in Sacramento Bee reprint that "The Scottish Rite paid approximately $40,000 for the property." However, since the Rite's very own newsletter says the land was a gift grant to them, writer tends to believe their version, since a gift is only a gift if one doesn't pay for it. Maybe figure was the new assessment value, made whenever property changes hands, and reporter assumed they'd paid that for it, masons having kept secretive terms of transfer, figuring it was nobody's business, and reporter never even considering that someone might've actually given away the property.
She, like her father, no doubt believed it essential that operation of one of earth's powerful healing spots be kept simple, affordable and service-oriented.
No room for any get-rich-quick schemes, unseemly preoccupation trying to ramp up revenue with lure of fancy lodgings and dining, or subsidizing costs by re-purposing use of grounds and then suffering sharing it with a select public to generate enough cash flow to compensate for intrusion onto what became thought as a private estate.
None of that worldly nonsense. Only enough to cover everyday costs maintenance, live-on grounds manager's living expenses and modest salary, maybe a modest improvement now and then. Operations under the Stewarts, and later the masons, seemed to often run close to break-even, or even at a modest loss...apparently more or less acceptable to all concerned.
For the place was never about making money; it was an altruistic endeavor, dedicated to providing affordable purification and healing as a public service for the benefit of a greater humanity.
It was essentially a public trust, a love-of-service, nonprofit-in-spirit enterprise. One devoted to enabling both city-choked travelers and locals alike to rejuvenate in easily accessible wild nature, roughing it with only basic amenities provided, while focusing on detoxing, unwinding, and healing nature's simple, time-proven way.
"It's a 24-hour day. It's like a child - you're always caring for it, nurturing it, trying to make it better." -- Crystal Foggy, co-manager with sister Astra, 2004-5, daughters of former land steward John Foggy
With Sacramento masons running the retreat from 1954 to 1969, lodge member couples drawn to the place themselves benefited from water treatments while living on grounds and managing the then seven-month open season spanning April Fools Day through Halloween.
Beyond hosting visitors at a then still uber-rustic retreat and providing mineral bath and sauna treatments, they busied themselves in constructing new lodgings like the row of present day apartments #1 - 6 running below the Cottage. (Writer's uncertain who built Cottage, or dorm units #7 - 10 for that matter, but it had to be either masons, following Weed investors, or Goodpastures.) Such lodging expansions enabled more to enjoy extended benefits of the waters. A focused series of 21 daily baths was then recommended to turn around more troubling maladies. see Masonic bulletin excerpts in Vintage News Articles
Synchronicity at work: Henry Stewart and his daughter each successively devoted 39 years of service to their simple yet extraordinary spa retreat. The stairway up to dorm rooms 7-10 above bathhouse, built by others long after their reigns, has, excluding later-added concrete landing pad...39 steps.
Weed Consortium
Follows Masons
In 1969, after some 15 years' operation, the masons sold the place for reasons unknown. Maybe they got tired of it not paying for itself any better due to a fitful
< A-frame group lodging,
built with NFL earnings
visitorship,and/or managers got cabin fever and wanted to move on and no replacements could be found.
In any event, it was soon sold to a consortium of three local Weed, California businessmen: Joe Aquila and Fred
Pilon (both of whom died about 2011), and head, former NFL football star Aaron Thomas, Jr. (Still kicking in Grants Pass,Oregon as of February 2021). He'd played tight end for the S.F. 49ers and New York Giants from 1961 through 1970.
While it might just be coincidence, Thomas was himself a mason. Possibly it was some token gesture by the Sacramento lodge to keep the place in the family, so to speak, with a clutching-at-straws rationale that by finding a fellow mason to take over, lodge would've somehow kinda sorta kept the solemn promise believed made to founder's daughter Katy to forever keep the place a simple affordable retreat dedicated to healing under Masonic protection.
And if new 'ownership' didn't, well, it was on them.
If so, fat lot of good it did. Besides immediately legally carving up the acreage for their own private vacation home fiefdoms, there was talk by new 'owners' -- no doubt among other fantasies -- of turning place into a football training camp. (As not too far away, recently-resurrected Harbin Hot Springs was once, long ago, a boxers' retreat, stranger things have happened. Farmers downstream who'd divert water from creek might've earned extra money fishing out and returning errant throws bobbing their way into onion fields.)
After 78 years of earnest straightforward dedication to healing under the Stewarts plus another 15 of what might be called dedication-lite by the Masons, things got sketchy...fast.
While the triumvirate did make improvements that would aid in the enjoyment by mostly future public visitors during their tenure of 19 months, including building current cabins #13 - 17 (unplumbed until later steward), they also, again, subdivided the land...legally lopping off the top and bottom quarters of former 40-acre parcel between themselves.
This action, perhaps more than anything since land became privately 'owned' until recently, served to further hamstring the healing potential of the land for the visiting public.
The A-frame house that's now rented to large groups (front shown two pictures up) was built as Thomas's own private vacation home on the realm's topmost 10 acres. To this day it remains a legally separate parcel from the main 20+ acre chunk, though it has always been tacked on to larger piece in Springs property transfers.
And what's known as the Green Springs House just outside entrance gates, appearing as the Springs gatehouse or maybe the manager's residence, was built as another private vacation home for one of the three. It too became its own narrow ten acre slice of former Springs property.
In contrast to A-frame parcel, it wasn't tacked back onto rest of Springs property in future transfers but stayed under different legal title. The massive gated wood fence built between it and rest of property -- and, much later, a surreal wire spanning high across the creek with a 'No Trespassing' sign weirdly swinging out over the flowing waters -- underscored the fact in no uncertain terms. In time the house would become longtime home of 1970's co-steward Carol Goodpasture's sister, renowned polarity massage therapist Elizabeth Wagner (crossed over 2012).
In the early 1980s it briefly became the leased residence of world-renowned Findhorn co-founder Peter Caddy. He was then interested in setting up a new kind of Findhorn, very possibly at Stewart Springs (then tenuously on the market, likely at a prohibitively speculative price). It would be a teaching and retreat center of sorts. His group actually did some workshop conferences on the grounds. For reasons uncertain, things never panned out. see Book Excerpts
What became known as the Cottage, perched above apartment row #1-6, was possibly built by the third member and kept within the main parcel. Maybe its original resident was willing to serve as caretaker for the public area's occasional guests and running of the bathhouse between enjoying one of the best sites on the land for its white noise water music, setting as it is right above the seasonally thundering creek.
In any event, again, on the subtle plane such divisive parceling out of the land might be viewed as having greatly handicapped the spirit of oneness of operation under the Stewarts and any more holistic enjoyment of realm by any more psychically attuned, awakened or sensitive visitors.
Stewart family's pure intent to keep the place simple, nonprofit, dedicated to affordable healing and rejuvenation -- the focus apparently more or less honored by the masons as long as they ran it -- faded like a rose cut from life-giving roots the instant they (apparently) abdicated their stewardship trust, selling it to businessmen with little understanding or regard for a place with such historic pedigree as a public-minded, mystical healing realm.
It's an everlasting pity they didn't take the time to find more suitable buyers, ones who'd naturally want to keep alive the dedicated focus of honoring the land by running a good-karma, benevolent break-even
public service...rather than going off the deep end with inappropriate diversionary trips, copping a mundane attitude of, "Well, it's our property now; we can do with it whatever we want...wow, the possibilities!"
Did the triumvirate -- or various other legal stewards following them -- perhaps consider the Stewarts fools for never having exploited such prime property and natural riches for profit? Possibly. That, or assumed -- as have many of a swath of the uninformed public over time -- that they'd merely been bumbling operators with no real head for business and so never made the place any more of a viable going concern, when in fact (as noted elsewhere), Henry Stewart was already a quite successful businessman from several related ventures before purchasing the land.
He had no doubt started the Springs retreat as a relaxing retirement service,enabling living closer to nature again...and a way of giving back after all his good fortune -- and, in the process, acknowledging and honoring the earth wisdom and land reverence of the native culture whose members decades earlier had possibly saved his life. His daughter and her husband appeared to hold the same attitude of gratitude, wanting to share the healing gift of the land, and likewise dedicated themselves to help serve an ailing humanity by offering a simple, nourishing retreat in a quiet, unassuming manner amid the restorative quietude of relatively unspoiled, wild nature.
Again, maybe over time the masons came to resent being saddled with such a remote operation. Possibly it had become something of a white elephant, sapping the lodge's energy, focus, and funds...and, again, they simply wanted to be shut of it after the latest caretakers/operators burned out seasonally living at the remote location and no new recruits were to be found.
Possibly the actual masonic members who reportedly made the solemn promise to Katy Stewart had by then died or retired...and current heads didn't feel the same solemn responsibility to continue honoring the trust given their lodge.
That, or, for all anybody knows, maybe she'd simply told them to just do the best they could for as long as they could, crossing her fingers and hoping for the best, that it might somehow remain locked into offering the public high-minded, altruistic healing service in perpetuity.
One might wonder if she or her British-American husband had ever considered making the place a legal nonprofit service operation. Or at least encourage the masons to pursue such a change, in order to lock it in protection, guaranteeing the healing realm would remain dedicated to serving the way it was and never be used for anything else. Maybe she'd concluded any such legal move was unnecessary in an age when one's word was their bond; there was no need to pay some high-priced lawyer for a convoluted paper chase...one that would've likely required spelling out in exacting, restrictive terms how to run what had always been a super relaxed, old-timey operation.
It's likewise unknown exactly why the three Weed businessmen didn't make a longer go of it than their 19 months. Maybe they'd snapped up the place cheap as a bargain they couldn't refuse, then were never quite sure what to do with it. Not beyond making speculative improvements while enjoying the place for themselves awhile in newly-built vacation homes before reselling for a presumably tidy profit once things got old and they itched to each go their own ways to tackle new financial ventures.
It's fairly safe to assume they were as a whole never keen on running any quaint, natural-healing minded bathhouse. It's more likely they'd hoped to get the place to pay for itself by becoming more of a rustic resort than a mineral spa retreat per se, lodging becoming the new central attraction through building five hillside rental cabins. (Once back on market, their own larger vacation structures, thrown into the mix, likely took operational focus further away from spa healing as the operation's main reason for being.)
Maybe one or more came to feel guilty for breaking up the tea set, as it were, being reminded that the place had long been a historic operation and deserved to be kept going by parties that could actually get into running a rural healing spa retreat, as did the founding family.
Or, again, being practical businessmen, it's possible they'd all simply agreed beforehand to flip it after a certain time and were all too willing to part with it to the first comer down the pike plunking down cash on the barrel head. One might always wonder.
In any event, as fate would have it they transferred the place to a party that to date has come the closest to honoring the land and resurrecting its original love-of-service spirit and purifying-healing-rejuvenation focus.
Grand Goodpasture Era
Far and away, the most colorful and thriving post-Stewart ownership reign unfolded when Carol and Winston Goodpasture's family arrived to take over the helm in the early 1970s.
They moved up from South Pasadena in Southern California on the tidal wave of late 60's-early 70's rebirth in natural healing ways and popular resistance to oppressive forces, wherever they lurked. It was a season of miracles. Visionary thinking held that those rarefied times were no less than Infinite Spirit giving all receptive lucid, super-technicolor previews of coming attractions of a planet transformed. Carol said she felt guided to the place. They called the A-frame home. (Unknown if they ever felt some unaccountable urge to watch NFL games.)
During those purple haze days the Springs enjoyed a renaissance of sorts, becoming something of an earthly paradise by all accounts of longtime, bohemian-minded locals. Upbeat steward-resident family graciously hosted visitors to immaculate grounds, zenned-out bathhouse operation and plentiful natural food in the grounds restaurant that they built, all at friendly prices. They did the same in the City of Mt. Shasta, building another restaurant there, sporting soaring open-beam ceiling and diagonal, roughsawn 1X4" cedar board walls, that later became Lalos mexican food restaurant.
Revered Karuk medicine man Charlie Thom asked, or was invited, to do regular full-moon sacred sweat lodge ceremonies and a spot was chosen just above the bathhouse, thus beginning a tradition that lasted some 45 years. Eventually it became a weekly Saturday sweat -- until December 2017, when present absentee stewardship effectively told them to leave, claiming otherwise prohibitive fire/liability rider would be tacked onto new insurance policy that the lodge couldn't begin to (or want to) cover.*
* Likely it was the unfortunate tragedy in a non-native, new-agey 'sweat lodge' outside Sedona, Arizona some years earlier that led insurance companies to skyrocket liability coverage for any business operation that included a sweat lodge ceremony open to the public.
see Emilie Frank's article, part 3. Also Goodpasture daughter Sandy's tribute to brother's restaurant operation. Also restaurant newsletter
There wasn't a car bridge much (any?) of the time. Everyone parked on the upper road and approached the bathhouse across the covered foot bridge with log foundation support spanning Parks Creek, once known as Angels Bridge. Carol sometimes greeted newcomers there with cup of cold mineral water to drink and thus start healing regimen -- if one could accept the mild sulfur taste. (Drinking mineral water was traditionally deemed as important as immersing in the waters and breathing it in as steam.)
What was until about 2014 the main bathhouse parking area back then offered inviting grass for clothing-optional sunbathing and picnicking.*
* Unknown if any low-key body freedom was afoot there earlier, especially in years following late 1929, when nudism as part of new radical lifestyle movement reached American shores from Germany. Called the Natural Man movement and predecessor to late 1960's advent of global counterculture, it began at the start of the last century. Besides radical body freedom, it promoted mineral water soaking, sauna-ing and steaming, hiking in wilds, rural living, raw food diet, draft and public school resistance, loose-fitting clothes, communalism and feminism, all of which the '60s countercultural movement would resurrect with a passion on a global level).
Whitneys:
Further decline & fall of
Stewart Springs
The Goodpastures' divorce -- there was trouble in paradise after all -- prompted a hasty selling of the place in 1980. They obviously were in no mood to write any book (or "How my Husband Merrily Blew My Fortune" might've been the title). The Springs had the misfortune of being 'sold' to a couple, the Whitneys, who either didn't appreciate the treasure, know how to care for it and/or seriously lacked the means to. They weren't good for the $300,000. balance soon due, the initial $30,000. down apparently having exhausted their resources.
Speculative Aside:
Was Whitney related to S.F.'s
Sutro Baths owner George Whitney?
Pure speculation here, but... one might wonder if ephemeral Springs holder Robert Whitney was any relation to San Francisco brothers Robert and Leo Whitney, who at various times owned and ran The City's Ocean Beach Playland-at-the-Beach, the Cliff House...and the famous Sutro Baths.
Whitney, San Francisco's "Barnum of the West," purchased the place and attempted rescue of the renowned but perennially money-losing Sutro Baths operation after Sutro's death, keeping it going a few decades more (thus enabling writer to enjoy roaming the fanciful sprawling realm during carefree youth), before throwing in one of ten thousand towels stocked for the masses who never showed.
Later-day Robert Whitney connected with John Foggy in San Francisco, where Foggy was based.
Combine these facts and curiosity's aroused. Granted, Whitney's not that uncommon a name, but one can't help wondering. Perhaps Springs's defaulting Whitney owner was a grandson or some such to regionally prominent Whitney family. If so, and in the genes as it were, he'd perhaps become irresistibly drawn to rescue yet another historically famous, financially-indifferent bathhouse operation, this time one at top of state and tucked up in the woods, but lacked the wherewithal to succeed.
If true, it would further solidify place's historic San Francisco connection, as back in the day visitors flocked to Stewart's from the Bay Area by taking a train up for a grand outing in the wilds of state's sparsely populated northern region. (Also popular was nearby Dunsmuir's Shasta Springs.)
If not, it's still a good story.
________________________________
History, cont'd
San Francisco's Foggy
(well, of course it is)
It's rumored the floundering Whitney couple actually tried to get mafia financing at some point for the looming hefty balance due, before finally snagging a last-minute investment loan from San Francisco entrepreneur John Foggy.
Foggy no doubt sensed a greater business opportunity if the couple defaulted, as it must've seemed very possible they might.
In less than two years, during which time the over-their-heads -- and reportedly a bit whacked-out -- couple let place go to wrack and ruin, they indeed gave up their misguided efforts, threw in towel, and the place went into foreclosure.
Foggy then promptly snapped up the property at county auction for the $20,000 back-taxes and penalties due. He was basically buying the place from himself, obviously not about to lose his investment. He thus became place's 'absentee steward' for the next 34 years, until early 2016. Hereby put to rest are rural legends how he picked the place up for a song on the county courthouse steps, or won it in some high-stakes poker game -- unless perhaps one considers the original speculative investment a poker hand of sorts, as it turned out an incredibly long one. (More on Foggy years later.)
Now, what about the man who started it all?
Pioneer Henry Stewart
According to 1890 census reports, founder Henry S. Stewart stood six feet even and was a blue-eyed gent. He came out west in 1851 on the wings of the California gold rush. In his early twenties, he was no doubt seeking fortune, fame, and adventure.
He'd trekked from northeastern Pennsylvania's coal-barging canal hometown of Honesdale, newly built to help sate New York City's voracious fuel appetite. For historic perspective, the year he was born, 1827, was only a year after the July 4, 1826 deaths of both U.S. founding fathers and second and third presidents John Adams and Thomas Jefferson (famously on nation's 50th anniversary).
Arriving in California by oxen wagon via Salt Lake City, after possibly first giving gold panning a try he found himself exploring the top of the state. The story goes that natives had secretly watched him exhausting himself futilely trying to get his heavy-laden wagon unstuck from the (possibly frozen) mud. They took pity on him after he keeled over in total prostration and faced possible death (assuming it was winter) if not rescued. So they carried him up to their sacred mineral waters sanctuary to soak in its healing waters, made hot by throwing in rocks super-heated in fire, similar to sweat lodge heating method still used today.
He credited the healing waters, along with their kind ministrations, for saving his life.
Stewart returned East during American Civil War years in the first half of the 1860s. (Undetermined whether or not he enlisted, as so many Henry Stewarts of Pennsylvania did.) But he came back in late 1860s, sailing around Horn this time, with his bride, Julia Newman, plus milling equipment. He then reportedly started the region's first grain mill in Edgewood and over time prospered through milling, farming, cattle ranching and dairy.
Long after having been cured by mineral waters on his first visit and becoming a staunch believer in its healing power, after lengthy legal delay he purchased 40 acres of Springs area land from the federal government in 1875. Apparently there'd been some dispute whether it was indeed government land or land given away by government to Central Pacific Railroad as part of incentive to build the rail line through region.
Such further contentious energies present around founding of the charitable enterprise might linger on the subtle as well to metaphysical thinking, further hobbling place's fuller potential as a healing retreat...that is, unless and until such karma's fully erased by a full-tilt, long-term dedication to once again provide greater humanity with compassionate purification, healing, and rejuvenation service.
< Poster from unknown year. maybe 1910s.
Note exorbitant bath price!
His was a labor of love, pure and simple. Again, perhaps fulfilling retirement gig, at age 46. (While this doesn't sound old today, the average lifespan then was considerably shorter.)
With no interest in making the retreat any sort of cash cow, happy to break even or even subsidize operation costs when need be, he and his family, between themselves, dedicated 78 years to fostering an affordable, well-grounded rural retreat for purifying, healing, and peaceful recreation (apart from possibly killing non-human residents for sport or food, that is) all amid wild alpine surroundings, often-lively Parks Creek coursing its merry way through. (Reportedly named after an early surveyor.)
Trivia: Henry Stewart's middle name was Stella. Back then it wasn't uncommon to honor female family member by bestowing name into male's.
Back to
Foggy days
A resourceful, self-made millionaire, John Foggy became, again, the fifth post-Stewart family (and first absentee) steward for some 34 years. He had likely never before dealt with such an operation...one whose bottom line -- original reason for being, even -- was not to generate profit but rather offer affordable purifying, healing and retreating as a public benefit service. While the two post-Stewart stewardships before him had tried making a go of things, the operation was still worlds away from gaining any real commercial viability.
What to do with such a philanthropic oddity, then. Re-sell it? Or -- as he did after briefly putting it on market and intuiting from ready responses that the place seemed undervalued and maybe worthy of building up as a long-term investment -- figure a way to make it a going concern over time.
To his everlasting credit, while indeed aiming to build place up to be a profit-generating mineral springs resort, one which would on certain levels take it further from the original spirit of Stewart's good-karma enterprise, he accepted a local management family who'd approached him with a proposal. They believed in the place so much, they were willing to work for peanuts to try to reactivate the realm's original dedicated healing focus. They apparently convinced him that with more and more people seeking such natural spa purification and rejuvenation, in time business would take off, which indeed became the case. But only after 20 long years of hit or miss effort. (see more of their story in 'Me and Mary and Stewart Springs'.)
Plus he was open-minded enough to allow clothing-optional during the last 16 years of his reign, 2000-2016. And had the good sense to keep place's historic and quaint rustic charm intact -- even if (dubiously) adding to it obliquely by building the neo old-fort entrance. (see side story below) And, despite occasional grumbling, let the by-then weekly Karuk sacred sweat lodge ceremonies continue doing their thing weekly on the dedicated spot above the bathhouse.
A future Frommers Guide would call the place "...one of the most unusual health spas in California."
Foggy wasn't always an 'absentee owner.' Early on he came up and stayed in the A-frame with his family on working vacations. Future co-managing daughters Crystal and Astra reported having fond childhood memories of the place. He no doubt tuned into the grounds, sussing possibilities and brainstorming ways to maybe upgrade it into a more upscale rustic springs resort, hoping to attract a broader variety of visitors beyond the then-limited base of natural healing devotees and often thin-spending countercultural trekkers.
Over time he'd produce radio and TV ads, using management personnel. Manager Mary Hildebrand's front-office managing mom, Pat, reportedly offered folksy pitches ala Motel 6 chain's Tom Bodet. And, like Motel 6, management had the staff turn the porch light on before leaving for home if a guest planned on arriving after nightfall when the office was closed.
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Side Story
Iconic, Ironic Fort Entrance
One dramatic change: building the wooden faux fort entrance that to this day greets visitors. Replete with massive plank gates, iron bracing, and crenelated watch towers, any impressionable no doubt half-expect to see the towers manned.
It possibly struck some as a misplaced movie set from a '50s western or a bygone bizarre attempt to create a rural Frontierland amusement park out in the boonies. One unlikely story has it that it was created to hopefully attract some investment interest from Hollywood for indeed filming a western.
Then again, it's possible the absentee steward just appreciated how John Wayne and other westerns film stars formerly visited a mile down the hill at Vanderbilt mansion, and also perhaps thought it a fitting symbolic tribute to the frontier times of retreat founder Henry Stewart. Be that as it may, the massive gates did serve to help protect grounds from vandals, thieves, and would-be squatters, as the place always closed for winter until late 1999.
Entrance stands as supreme irony on one level: Old West forts were built to protect white men from marauding red men, who refused to abandon their deep-rooted homelands, while natives ran to sacred springs seeking king's x's refuge from marauding white men determined to exterminate them. Some, especially Native Americans, might therefore view the entrance note as more than a tad historically insensitive -- if not plumb nuts -- appearing as it does to be symbolically protecting Native Americans' ancestral healing grounds from themselves. Say what?
In any event, entrance is a mind-boggler for every first-timer:
"Now entering Fort Stewart, safe at last! Let our cavalry help you find respite from the slings and arrows of modern times by enjoying our refreshing spa. (Kindly check your attitudes at front office.)"
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Managements under Foggy reign:
Early 1980s thru 2016
Having other, larger businesses to run -- Foggy reportedly once held custodial contracts for every U.S. Air Force base west of the Rockies -- he switched operations to macro-management, hoping to build it into a going concern by relying on modestly-paid, living-on-grounds managers' business acumen and creative innovations -- all within his hard-nosed directives. He told them that since he lived so far away and would seldom visit, they should act as if they instead owned the place, in order to gain the best sense of what likely needed to be done to increase business. Of course, any illusion of 'owning' it often clashed with reality as the place often straggled by with a fitful, small staff working on a starvation budget.
He'd apparently often flirted with the idea of selling it -- reportedly soliciting offers, then withdrawing from market once essentially getting real-life appraisals and possibly having a few almost-sells. Hollywood action actor Steven Seagal, for instance, once made a ridiculously low counter-offer on the place -- reportedly about $60,000 -- that was rejected out of hand. (Possibly the figure allowed for the high cost of bringing the place up to health and building codes; the wiring, for one, was an antiquated mess.)
Again, this led to an epidemic of false rumors of some mysterious new 'owner' having snapped up the place every time a new manager appeared at the front office desk, displaying pronounced proprietary airs. (Absentee stewards, it seems, all too easily cause such faulty assumptions. Over the decades, reviewers frequently referred to place's hired managers as the actual 'owners', when of course they're only employees doing the absent steward's bidding.)
He finally DID let go of operation, on January 19, 2016, after 34 years of alternately sitting on place and building it up. (His daughter, two-year co-manager Crystal, had earlier passed on an offer to let her take over the place permanently, eventually inheriting it, as not her cup of tea.)
For how much? Trip to county court house, where it's public information, revealed that the place went for $US 2.6 million.
Foggy managers over years:
~ (Earliest managers unknown)
~ Couple: Susie Frank and Joe Helweg, lived on grounds; 11 years, 1989-1999
~ Mary Hildebrand, Susie's cousin, five years, 1999-2004 (died 2004), lived 12 miles away; both tenures with Susie's and Mary's mothers, Cece and Pat respectively, taking turns managing front office
~ Foggy's daughters Crystal and Astra (latter lived on grounds in Cottage; former lived in Mt. Shasta); two years, 2004-2006
~ Couple: Ted Duncan, 2006-2015, ten years; (died 2015); and wife Rowena Pantaleon, 12 years, 2006-2017; lived on grounds in Cottage much of time until Ted's passing, then mostly remote managing last two years for new 'ownership' from distant Chico home
(see story of 1989-2005 family management and writer's eventual role in it in second tale of Something about Mary)
(History cont'd after long aside)
Warning: Long, rambling, opinionated sidebar ahead.
Scroll past if of no or little interest.
New, still inappropriate 'ownership' focus
Will place ever get it right again?
As most everyone surely knows by now, the Springs got its first new 'owners' in ages. Title transferred January 19, 2016. Individual names are unknown to writer (which fact speaks volumes on transparency).
As mentioned, vague rumors of new stewards were rife over decades, resulting every time some officious new front desk manager appeared. Many visitors apparently couldn't distinguish between absentee 'owner' and various managers hired by them who
must, in chronic absence of steward, ACT as though they indeed 'owned' the place. Perhaps the notion of proprietor not being there or at least popping in now and then to mingle with guests was simply too weird and discomforting a reality to easily wrap one's mind around.
Thw new, Pneuma-Institute-involved title holders reportedly live as far away as L.A., Mexico and South America -- making for way-y absentee stewardship indeed. (And one thought San Francisco was a far piece.) New grounds management only coalesced two years after sale, again, old manager Rowena P. having stayed in charge two years past the legal property transfer, acting mostly by remote from hundreds of miles away, relaying new absent stewards' policy changes for grounds' rubber-stamping staff to follow rigorously, no questions asked:
We want you to cut down all those hillside trees... (?) well, okay. Tell people they can't skinnydip anymore... ya gotta be kidding! -- okay, okay, don't get your undies in a bunch... Sign this nondisclosure agreement if you want to keep your job... jeesh...well, okay (something's fishy here, but hell, it's a paycheck...)
"I'm listening"
L​ong before sale to new 'owners', a hidden microphone was secretly planted in office by old management. It was aparently done, among other reasons like security, to try to nip in the bud any staff members who'd dared grumble about their sometimes heavy-handed marching orders. Mic seemed to continue serving much the same function with new 'absentee stewards.' It worked to keep any office staff from talking out of school, as it were, by those inclined to commiserate with dumbfounded longtime visitors without suffering dire consequence, once sea-level operational changes began gutting the former downhome, unpretentious spirit of the place.
At least one office worker was fired as a result (She had planned to quit anyhow, unwilling to any longer be party to such a grievously dispirited scene.)
Is that spooky or what? Writer had suspected such a device existed long before title-ship change, ever since a personal incident. One day, no sooner had I started voicing a bit of constructive criticism in the office, as was my wont, to front desk Linda Boyle's sympathetic ear*, than suddenly head manager Rowena rushed in out of nowhere for no apparent reason, trying to act all nonchalant by just standing there and looking about, the very picture of (feigned) innocence.
* Sad to report, office manager Linda and husband Joe, vital SMS handyman for many years, lost everything but their lives in tragic fire a few years after retiring to Paradise, California, site of state's devastating 2018 Camp Fire.
More sensitive visitors, especially those treasuring memories of mellower times, might've felt as if some springs gestapo had somehow suddenly, surreally taken over the place. The same basic thing happened after Foggy bought place in early 1980s, before later mellowing, as related further on. see new owner article
Steward change at first seemed pregnant with possibility. Writer optimistically hoped it would prove a golden opportunity to more fully redeem the legacy of the pioneer founding family and further re-activate the healing spirit of the land. New ostensible stewardship was, after all, involved in a quasi-spiritual field, and before the sale had reportedly told the manager that they basically liked the place just the way it was. (see home page). Of course, it's possible this was only a fabricated story to keep the natives from rebelling until she was safely out of the picture, or maybe she herself was naive enough (or possibly distracted by the handsome 10% broker commission she was about to earn) to take them at their word.
In any event, it had surely seemed a golden chance to re-dedicate the place and fine-tune operation to affordable, profound purifying, healing and rejuvenation, in the process drawing in renewed involvement of a wider community, with all its varied talents, skills, and resources. Place appeared maybe poised to become an even more thriving cultural healing center -- locally, nationally, globally.
Sadly, time proved the latest absentee stewards were not the least bit interested in keeping the place 'just the way it was.' They'd apparently only been biding their time, all the while patiently spinning grandiose, unseemly, private-minded diversionary plans. Soon enough, they proved their intent to SERIOUSLY change the operation, essentially re-purposing the entire place to suit their own conservative organization's exclusive shtick and mindset.
Apparent aim: revamping visitor base to Spring-unsavvy traffic (at least for a while) to help support outfit's psychoanalytical shtick, the public effectively defraying 'rental' cost to have place also serve as their Pneuma world headquarters (they have branches in several countries). Plus, of course, enable its various affiliated groups and family members to enjoy the place for themselves from time to time as their own little shangri-la.
Forget any altruistic effort to further provide general public with a dedicated, genuine, affordable healing spa, and simple lodging for longer enjoyment and benefit of natural elements. And, in what one called a crime against humanity, forget the spa, period.
Gone with the wind...or so it might appear.
Spring-purist visitors, on finding the cornerstone of the progressive spa atmosphere, clothing-optional, suddenly verboten, plus sacred sweat lodge kicked off the land, viewed changes as little more than the place having morphed into some ersatz, convention-bound, fundamentalist-friendly, watered-down tourist trap, one saddled with weird, monetized new-age overtones.
One would think that over $26,000 a year in county property taxes alone to scrape together would've provided incentive enough to stay with the proven formula that was so solidly supported by the long established loyal customer base. But they seem to have made a gamble that they could divert entire focus of place and in time generate more (or at least be more comfortable) with an entirely different visitorship subsidizing their private schtick. So they blew off the huge bohemian-leaning base, whose support, again, was largely responsible for putting the operation well into the black for possibly for the first time ever (and no doubt driving up the sale price).
Time has proven that they intended all along to morph the place into totally their own thing, seemingly indifferent to the global public's deep affection for it, and were resigned to the high 'rent' as the price to pay for legally derailing the place's longtime spa dedication to suit their own ill-suited purposes, willing to accept becoming seen as dastardly villains and risk it becoming a perpetual money pit. (Or had perhaps finagled some convoluted tax write-off to minimize the ouch of ongoing cash drain.)
As related on home page, soon after new actual-on-grounds management arrived, in December 2017 on wings of way-absentee stewardship board members' visit, the place's sporadically powerful medicine wheel ground to a screeching halt. They'd thrown a boxful of monkey wrenches into it by kicking out the sacred sweat lodge and erasing the springs gazebo love and prayer offering altar -- on top of a year earlier scrapping the old-management unsupported but 'owner'-okayed, clothing-optional policy of a generation's standing.
No surprise, former high visitor volume tanked overnight.
The misguided changes obviously marked a grievous crimp in realm's healing energy and a precipitous decline of place as the tenuously open-minded, unassuming, service-focused healing refuge it served as for ages.
Place lost every cultural touchstone that helped make it such an extraordinarily popular and beloved spot.
Rash actions utterly devastated its myriad former supporters. Sweat lodge was a deep 45-year tradition at springs keeping alive spirit of thriving cultural diversity, including -- critically -- original pre-white-man descendants' tapping the extraordinary medicine of sacred grounds, in ritual connecting participants with prehistoric roots of American land.
The spring-source gazebo altar had reflected the heartsong of a grateful visitorship and enabled thoughtful, spontaneous sharing. And clothing-optional policy was crucial, to many people's way of thinking, to foster a more profound, enjoyable and effective purification regimen...lest the spa experience felt like taking a bath with your clothes on. It had showed compassion for humanity by ignoring the age-old taboo of public nudity, allowing one to more readily heal through deeper communion with nature and one another (who are -- lest one forget -- as much a part of nature as the trees and water, fire and air).
Current woefully inappropriate intent, again, seems to be bound and determined to totally re-purpose place...to serve, among other things, as some academic teaching center for practicing therapy professionals to gain extra credentials, enabling one to add transpersonal psychology methodology to tool chest and hang yet another framed certificate on wall to gather dust and reassure patients paying small fortunes for long-term psychotherapy treatments that their money's well spent.
Stripping out the former vibrant bohemian-leaning culture to accommodate such a private-minded, buttoned-down mindset and super-structured, clinical approach to healing patients in distant cities alienated myriad long-time Springs aficionados beyond measure, to the point of a de-facto boycotting place en masse.
Countless fans around the world refuse to support the place as it's now run.
Prayers are for appropriate future stewardship to rescue realm after anticipated abysmal failure of current misguided effort to so mindlessly alter place to some psychotherpeutic, quasi new-age, organized-religion tinged scene-- one that in so many ways can't BEGIN to hold a candle to mother nature's own simple, effective ways to uplift and reintegrate body-mind-spirit. (One of ostensible central goals of Pneuma approach...ahem.)
Actions are too bizarre for words. It's a misguided effort that time will almost certainly prove disastrous for parties involved.
In other countries -- sometimes even in U.S, like Virginia's Berkeley Springs, nation's oldest mineral springs resort; Washington soaked there -- such a rarity as Stewart Springs would've long ago become a protected public holding, something like a dedicated trust or working historic state park.
Not that that would necessarily be the best solution. Perhaps better if the future benefactor steward legally sets up place as a charitable nonprofit operation in perpetuity, as reportedly done long ago at nearby Jackson Wellsprings in southern Oregon, and as did California's Harbin Hot Springs when creating its nonprofit Church of Heart Consciousness -- thus quashing any possible future inappropriate notions of would-be 'ownership' ever again trying to co-opt place to run in variance from its simple, revered tradition: dedication to providing greater humanity with affordable purifying, healing, and rejuvenating amid the glad tidings of nature.
So inclined former fans of place might bestir imaginations. Think of possible new benefactor(s) for place...ones both conscious and affluent enough to afford to 'buy' place, if and when current remote stewards throw in towel, thus enabling Springs to become a good-karma operation once again, brainstorming ways regional community can again plug into place, volunteering innumerable diverse talents, ideas and resources...at long last making place everybody's baby. Forming a nonprofit group with express purpose of attracting such a benefactor, or gaining a purchase grant, like from MacKenzie Scott, would seem crucial.
Anyone out there feeling ambitious?
More synchronicity: a mindboggling indication that the universe is on our side: said Harbin Hot Springs, one of the U.S. West Coast's most popular and free-spirited spa resorts, busy rebuilding after devastating fire, re-opened on January 19, 2019 -- the same exact date that three years earlier new Stewart 'owners' took legal control. Some kind of grand neutralization effect in effect, perchance?
(Stewart Springs History, cont'd)
Ball dropped
in early 1980s
As noted, the Whitney mis-stewarding couple before Foggy had let place go to wrack and ruin over their short 20 month tenure -- a state it seemed to take decades to recover from. Some who remember halcyon Goodpasture days or momentous millennium-fever times might've said it was still struggling to recover when latest legal title transfer changed everything again.
Of course, the former were euphoric times, what many saw as the massive first flushes of humanity's latest cycle of spiritual re-awakening, replete with giddy possibilities after slumbering through abysmally dark and violent times of World War 2 era.
Far easier to build positive energy flows with spiritual bar set so ridiculously low. Some hold that the early '60s marked spiritual low point in grand 26,000 year spiritual cycle and the only way was up...that all the over-the-top psychedelic hippie hoopla only reflected a full-tilt celebration of a historically staggering cosmic moment.
The latter turn of the century period was a similar euphoric time, if nowhere near as earth-shaking, one that fostered wildly free, liberating notions -- like enjoying the spa, sunshine and creek non-encumbered by needless cloth if one so chose.
The place had earlier turned 180 degrees from being a lighthearted bohemian oasis to murky wayward backwater -- even rednecky* -- leisure resort. No doubt nature spirits who'd once enchanted the place fled in terror, no longer feeling loving kindness of humans resonating with the land.
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*During the first visit in the bathhouse in the mid 1980s, writer encountered a rough, unkempt man slouching in chair behind desk, just hanging out and idly chewing the fat with another. Trying to get handle on new place and feeling totally lost at sea, sensing chaos and confusion reigning supreme, for want of any better question, I asked if he was the owner. "Wrong color," he snorted in contempt. (Absentee steward was Black.)
Findhorn's Peter Caddy;
French Chef Serge Margot discover Springs
There were fitful spiritual retreats and workshops, aided by nearby Mount Shasta's powerful metaphysical energies, calling forth healing forces to reactivate sanctuary's positive frequency -- notably in 1983-1984, when Peter Caddy of international Findhorn fame held workshops on grounds while living at Green Springs house outside fortress gate, and sussed possibilities of buying place, then tenuously on market, and creating a "New Findhorn" teaching center. see Book Excerpts
Also in 1980s-early 1990s, an amazing dining addition to place unfolded. Certified French chef Serge Margot, wanting to simplify life after having run ritzy restaurant in Bay Area (and working in Paris before), moved up into region. He'd discovered Springs restaurant building built by Goodpastures going begging, almost as if just waiting for him to rescue it. He signed lease in a heartbeat, soon to delight of gourmets everywhere. Place became instant destination for fancy dining, sometimes serving over a hundred for Sunday brunch. (Writer was lucky enough to enjoy one of his delicious veggie sandwiches on his very first visit to Springs.)
Unknown how long it lasted or why such a solid addition to place ended (if far from plant-based focus as befits any genuine radical-healing place); possibly inability to find right management for Springs as a whole. Or maybe Foggy tried upping lease into the stratosphere on wings of operation's roaring success. Anyway, building soon reverted to accustomed forlorn empty-building status. see Jenny Coyle's newspaper article.
Despite such extraordinary happenings at Springs, the overall trajectory of place was downhill, not enough abiding positivity to keep negativity from eclipsing and dominating scene in the long run. Too often visitors seemed more interested in hiding out in the country a spell, perhaps going on a bender, than in focusing on any silly purifying spa regimen.
While some indeed did keep coming to soak and sauna, others simply liked to get drunk off their butts in their rented cabins* -- or nurse a bottle of Jack Daniel's and puff stogie in the outdoor Jacuzzi outside office, thereby neatly accomplishing both at once. Until 2000, ashtrays were scattered throughout sundeck area -- even directly outside main massage room off deck, smoke drifting underneath door making getting relaxing massage a bit problematic. It seemed all for smokers' convenience lest, perish the thought, one started feeling too healthy. Rumored reports of a prostitution bust on grounds further scandalized place.
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*As evidenced by surprising number of hard-liquor empties writer found in dumpsters during remedial recycling efforts in early 2000s as caretaker
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History trivia: word 'SPA' was born as acronym for Latin phrase Salus Per Aquas, meaning "Health through water". Who knew?
Local free spirits briefly claimed place a de facto free hippie summer camp after then-gateless business operations ceased and personnel vanished between owners Whitney and Foggy. They were finally ordered off grounds by unpleasant ex-Marine packing a sidearm whom Foggy had brought in. It was felt by those who'd loved place for decades and remembered mellower times that once Goodpastures abandoned ship all the carefully built-up good will and loving care and open-minded, progressive spirit were destroyed wholesale. (Not unlike now; Springs history seems to be rhyming.)
Iffy times
Place went through scary times of lost vision -- sterling century-old track record tarnished like silver jewelry left on during mineral water soak. Things got so bad at one point that a hard-drinking custodian patrolled the grounds at night with double-barreled shotgun.
Seems place can be either heaven or hell, with precious little in between.
(see second Something about Mary story, in part about the dedicated 1989-2004 family management by cousins Suzy and Mary, mothers CeeCi and Pat, respectively, latter's sister Mary, plus longtime bath attendant in-law Linda, married to sisters' brother.)
Managers under Foggy had work cut out for themselves. They dealt as best they could on often over-tight budget. Managements over decades varied approaches from gracious benign neglect and micro-manged no-nonsense with spirited teamwork to chaotic macro management and near-anarchy with surreally casual hirings and capricious firings. Each according to owner and management intent, awareness, lifestyle, budgetary support of owner, management skill or lack thereof, and, of course, that major wild card, changing times.
Everyone pretty much flew by seat of their pants trying to revive the patient and get new -- hopefully profitable -- handle on institution, then seemingly ailing almost as grievously as young Henry had been a century and half earlier.
(History cont'd after sidebar)
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Editorial esoterica sidebar
In metaphysical teaching each calendar day has a unique blend of subtle yet pronounced astrological influences. Property officially changed hands January 19 (2016), a powerful prosperity day -- on all levels, not just material but spiritual and emotional as well. (As it turns out, it's birthday of no less than wild-child powerhouse singers Janice Joplin and Dolly Parton, and, in amazing synchronicity, January 19 (2019) was re-opening date of Harbin Hot Springs.) One might've hoped this would bode well for new, prosperous, feel-good Springs chapter.
Also though, Mercury was retrograde, which oddly enough can reportedly have positive effect on existing businesses, as truth is potentially brought to fore, giving chance to correct course and refine operation.
As time has revealed, this is not always the case, especially for what had long been in spirit at least if not legally, a nonprofit charitable operation. And if well-centered, forthright, integrated intent is lacking out the gate, then uncertain, potentially chaotic, and mentally confusing energies might seem an inevitable result. Especially if harboring intentions at such drastic odds with Stewart Mineral Springs's long-dedicated reason for being, utterly betraying it.
Planetary influences might thus ultimately serve to make current ownership a relatively brief one.
New, ideally appropriate owner(s) might then rescue place and invite community to seriously plug in, sharing diverse talents, resources, and brainstorms, at last redeeming place's historic legacy, serving as down-home, affordable healing and rejuvenation mineral springs retreat that every true-blue lover of genuine spa retreats.
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Stewart Springs History cont'd
It was a steep and rocky climb getting even tenuous positive energies back after place's first unscheduled detour through hell (third if including native massacre about grounds). This in part due to putting off countless needed repairs and upgrades until increased business volume could justify outlays -- or to avoid lawsuits over unsafe conditions. Example of latter: before the car bridge was finally rebuilt there were planks so rotten that a heavy person could've jumped down hard at one spot and conceivably crashed right through and into the creek. Situation was also in part due to elusive efforts to find fresh management not dragged down by the inertia of place's sometimes-gnarly past, willing to work cheap and roll with the then absentee steward's sometimes hard-nosed directives.
Just smelly water, revisited
After the Stewart family's 78-year tenure spanning 1875 to 1954, each new legal steward scrambled to re-define place according to their own lights. Even the most earnest efforts could be hampered by a faster-paced materialistic world that no longer gave credence to clear water. So little, there wasn't time, interest, or inclination to write any history of place -- one, again, so vested in such perceived quaint folk cure remedies that it was simply ignored, if not ridiculed, by more nature-alienated and unenlightened minds.
Crystal Foggy, during her brief general manager tenure along with older sister Astra before, as said, deciding it wasn't for her, had been interested in the idea of writing some book on the place. She'd recently graduated from San Francisco State University with a masters in international business and had various creative ideas kicking around. They implemented some during few-years tenure, including expanding office to include renovated gift shop, creating a wellness cabin, adding custom tile design work to office and changing-room floor, building new, wider stairway from sundeck to creek -- and a biggie, rebuilding and enlarging the sauna.
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New incarnation of sauna
Before Foggy sister managers Crystal and Astra flew off to Rio for Carnivale with brother in winter 2006, they told contractor John Monk to have the venerable but badly-aging old sauna torn out and a new, larger one up and running in its stead by time they got back a week later. This involved among other things repurposing space of tub rooms #5 and 6 by tearing down walls and building new ones and LOTS of poured concrete.
Design spun on the fly, a local crew of ten-- including carpenters Ohbe and Lewis, stone mason Tony, and electrician Andy -- miraculously manifested it on time despite working with a foot of fresh-fallen snow on ground. Crystal brought back large heart-shaped double crystal that was worked into sauna's stone wall behind the wood stove and backlit for a magical, slowly color-changing accent. (When daily programmed, that is; left to its own devices it soon began to flash like an over-caffeinated neon sign, driving sweaters hoping to relax nuts -- perhaps serving as a dead giveaway of the underlying over-commercial focus of the operation).
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Crystal had considered separating the noisy laundry room from the bathhouse, as it detracted from soakers achieving any more serene state. At one point, discouraged by ailing infrastructure needing so much money constantly poured into it to bring it up to snuff, writer heard her mutter, "Sometimes I think it'd be easier just to tear the old place down an start over."
On wings of the sudden demise of longtime manager Mary Hildebrand in 2005, things were in too much upheaval with the struggle to get a grip on basic everyday operation to even think of taking on any such nonessential project like writing a history of the place. See something about Mary
The curse
Significantly, and closely related to earlier reason no book's ever been written, is an apocryphal American Indian curse -- one apparently attributed to many native-revered mineral springs, and almost certainly to Stewart's -- that white men never profit from the wrested sacred healing grounds.
As droll wits pointed out, curse wasn't all-inclusive enough, as former 'owner' Mr. Foggy, who was Black, indeed actually started turning decent profits (perhaps for the first time in long Springs history). Towards end of tenure he reportedly cleared over a quarter-million dollars a year. Of course, he'd sporadically plow loads of revenue back into improvements and upkeep, like rebuilding car bridge, replacing bathhouse flooring, rebuilding stairways, installing new plumbing, creating new walking bridge below conference hall...
Add to original White 'owners' the longtime Black remote steward, former longtime Yellow manager, new Brown 'co-owners' and, of course, sweat lodge's and prehistoric Red non-owners, and Springs might appear to be gaining some powerful harmonizing cultural rainbow energy for the most diverse, all-inclusive, global culture to flourish in the future.
see New Day Dawning
Tragic Lore: Renaissance rock star David Crosby's brother, Ethan, also a guitar musician, once worked at Stewart's. He later took his life, as did at least two other then-current or recent Springs employees, plus manager Mary H., all female. (None at the property, small mercy.) Place's violent-legacy influence?
Curse or no, Mother Nature's protective elemental forces no doubt rebelled whenever man's covetous hopes for bountiful investment return by trying to cash in on special waters and natural environ superseded desire to serve and heal. Maybe natives, so rich in earth wisdom, didn't so much cast a curse as merely point out obvious. Obsession with accumulating yellow rocks and "dead frog skins" (paper currency) had inevitable consequences.
However, since there was such a hellacious effort by intolerant settlers, again, possibly stirred up and led by hired railroad guns, to wipe them out -- as fate would have it in and around long-established sacred healing ground -- there was almost undoubtedly one mighty curse cast. As mentioned elsewhere, many believe angry ghosts of slain warriors served as enforcers by haunting grounds beyond time, casting dark shadows over the place and seriously crimping potential for healing visitors.
Psychic visitors with the ability to sense presence of earthbound discarnates reported tuning in to incredibly hostile energies. One such gifted person, Sequoia, who earlier had to quit a hospital job for all the restless spirits encountered there, related to often being screamed at to go away during her bathhouse attendant work tenure. Understandably she had trouble focusing on work.
Late revered Karuk medicine man Charlie Thom led an exorcism of ancestral tribe's slain spirits from grounds on request for help from late co-manager Ted Duncan, who was having violent nightmares. Charlie's grandfather and father, then a boy, were spared being massacred only because they were camped further up snake canyon (as they called it) during the hot spell. They heard prolonged gunfire and came down later to witness the massacre's unspeakable aftermath.
see wonderful story of his life mission. Also late manager Ted's story.
Fast forward and Charlie was considered too sickly a child to bother trying to brainwash in the culture-destroying boarding schools. He was left undisturbed at home to receive the treasure trove of his tribe's wisdom and ways. He would spend his life imparting the special knowledge, spirit at one point telling him it was time to share sacred medicine with all who were respectfully interested. (Some tribal members strongly disapproved; to this day there's a serious split in Karuk circles -- new casino in Yreka is product of those largely NOT approving of his open sharing, nor of Walking Eagle's continuing sacred sweats that remain open to all earnest and respectful to sacred ways of the Red Road.)
No interest
Time and effort helped the place get back to some semblance of healing grounds by more mindful modern-day 'owners.' But as it was long revered sacred land -- a mystical realm where even warring tribe members laid down their weapons and soaked together peaceably -- it remains to this day a steep climb to regain anything even remotely approaching the original prehistoric scene -- one purely dedicated to purification, healing and rejuvenation in profound respect for nature and in complete harmony with it -- before greed and intolerance, the frequent ugly handmaidens of so-called civilization, came along.
Sharing the Misery
There was only a small, modestly paid staff to work through often gnarly winters. Complicating operations further were periodic disasters on grounds due to only partially winterized plumbing and daunting efforts to keep roads cleared and paths shoveled after periodic deep snowfalls blanketed land. Also, a serious lack of sunshine in steep alpine canyon after October could greatly lower staff's serotonin levels, further depressing work morale. It was as if land wanted to hibernate and humans were only meddling.
It almost seemed at lowest moments that the violent vibration of grounds' tragic past re-surfaced. Then an angry climate prevailed, with hair-trigger tempers and attitudes of "Why do I even bother? Nobody appreciates my efforts" and "I'm not getting paid near enough for this," among staff and management alike. Whenever they fell down such black holes of despair, feeling overworked and underpaid, then day visitors, and especially overnight guests, who experienced the resulting indifferent to rough and sketchy treatment, reacted variously with furious disdain, grave disappointment or stupefied disbelief.
It made everyone unhappy campers. see Rants & Raves
Medicine Wheel Slows
Many deemed the tightrope act of management -- trying to balance place as a healing ground while attempting to generate maximum profit -- an impossible one. It lent exquisite irony to old businessman quip, "Well, I'm not in business for my health."
There were dark days, days anyone who experienced them tried to forget. Writer was once threatened with being thrown off covered bridge for trying to politely but firmly hoping to enforce a new 'no smoking on bridge' policy to a Nam vet local with PTSD.
Violent energy could all too easily prevail whenever too few people held an intent to reactivate place's healing energy, potential majestic motion of land's medicine wheel hampered by the over-worldly, covetous owner/management focus.
To the degree remote stewards, managers, workers -- visitors, too -- didn't attune to sacred power of land and waters, region's medicine wheel slowed, too much for most to appreciate or even recognize its existence and its timeless potential for extraordinary healing. Or want to write about it. Not beyond occasional newspaper articles like thoughtful mid-1970s series by Emilie Frank for decades preserved on yellowed wall plaques on bathhouse lobby and restaurant walls. It painted a vivid picture of place during renaissance
Goodpasture years of 1970s for visitors, reminding everyone of the jewel -- diamond in rough -- place was and remains.
Viva la musica
During more together times, the healing retreat land hosted repeated popular gatherings, workshops and music events. A bevy of regional and visiting healing musicians, recording artists, and entertainers graced Springs over the years, Eric Bergland, Matisha, Kathy Zavada, Carolyn Hedger, and Anton Miserak among them. Some event organizers (not all musical) would go on to greater renown, like best-selling author Gary Zukav and peace troubadour/author/film producer James Twyman.
The region is so rich in musically transcendent talent and Stewart Springs such a natural locale for people far and wide to enjoy them in a nature-rich, healing atmosphere, it seems a shame that place's current 'ownership's' non-community-minded intent appears light years away from enabling any such continued cultural coming together of wider community...as currently done regularly with great success (in pre-Covid times) at hour-away Jackson Wellsprings in northern outskirts of Ashland, Oregon.
(History cont'd after long sidebar)
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Fair warning: another long, opinionated aside
For-profit vs.
nonprofit operation;
plus, dread clothing-optional ban
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Is for-profit operation self-defeating
at healing resorts?
Over-focus on turning profit obviously can easily erode any ostensible healing place's potential. In times past, management and staff's brisk cordial business surface often masked a callous drive to feed ever-hungry maw ever more revenue, management possibly incentivized through profit-sharing bonuses if exceeding some annual-set financial goal.
All involved could end up compromising finer natures and personal integrity for the sake of job security, financial reward, free baths, maybe the power trip of running a renowned institution. If so doing, they naturally became the poorer for it. They mortgaged chance of ever grokking what place was all about: healing body and spirit and coming together into closer harmony with nature and other beings while receiving soul-enriching blessing from universe for performing dedicated service (while working for peanuts).
This is why so many of northwest's most popular mineral spring resorts are set up as nonprofit, like Harbin and Ashland, Oregon's Jackson Wellsprings -- sometimes collectively owned and/or operated like central Oregon's intentional community Breitenbush. Such setup potentially allows deeper focus, providing more-grounded and heart-centered service, unalloyed by any off-putting, growling profit hunger.
Of course, nonprofit as business model can have its own problems -- like over time possibly experiencing grave disconnect between the original intent and
current operation, becoming a bureaucratic machine, or cliquish social scene more dedicated to perpetuating themselves than offering genuine service. Example: when huge outfit Volunteers of America booked a lavish party junket at Springs in 2001, writer was shocked at giddy spending from donated funds, including luxuriant terrycloth robe giveaways at blow-out cheese and wine tasting party in A-frame -- likely a corporate donor tax write-off or some such.
That said, the way nonprofit springs keep revenues pegged to actual running costs and building improvement/replacement reserves rather than running place to generate wealth can tend to inspire and empower staff and management to create a far more relaxed and nurturing atmosphere...one more dedicated to the joy of service, mindfully fostering the increased well being of humanity.Where is this more important than at place existing to purify and heal while offering retreat from sundry stresses of everyday world?
Barring such a set-up, only with enlightened compassionate capitalism like Stewart's was early on hoped to have by some with the new 2016 stewardship (scroll down past long editorial), can the place ever excel and unfold greatest potential as a healing retreat...one that keeps place from turning into yet another superficial spa for the spiritually challenged and nature alienated, seeking pampering to compensate for having let their higher selves get compromised in uneven playing field's systematic scramble for mammon.
Though some, like writer, bemoaned the fact that the operation wasn't nonprofit, like Harbin or collective like Breitenbush, Stewart's came along nicely in some ways during last years under Foggy. He had by then unlimbered wallet and lavished many improvements; place made notable strides beautifying grounds and upgrading facilities while also allowing c/o last 16 years.
Nicer grounds can of course foster greater peaceful relaxation and sense of well being. Even if perhaps more motivated by wanting to sell it faster and at better price, such improvements likely helped those pursuing lightwork to better tune out any untoward business energies floating about around the edges and tune in to place's original harmonious healing and purifying vibration. (And let better flourish its infectious popularity among bohemian-friendly.)
Some say last managers tried as best they could, given strictly-business directive within 10-year contract to maximize revenue, even amid one's critically failing health, to build a more healing-focused, albeit conventionally-leaning, operation. But, again, it was on impossible tightrope act. Predictable mixed-bag result of miracles and disasters was the inevitable result, as so dramatically reflected in place's polarized reposted online rants and raves reviews.
Bottom line: Regardless of financial structure, intent is always the crucial factor. Ironic case in point: new 'ownership's' Pneuma Institute is a nonprofit. See how much good that's doing for place, being run as a for-profit adjunct acquisition by its nonprofit parent as allowed by California law.
Clothing-optional: gone with the wind?
More than mild cause for concern among countless now-estranged friends of Stewart Springs was how new absentee 'ownership' mindlessly junked clothing-optional policy. Countless instantly found the new mandatory cover-up by turn laughable, depressing, and intolerable.
It went into effect 11-1-16 after 17 years of bathhouse being low-keyly clothing-optional (in sauna, sundeck and creek area, wrapping up in between places).
Ban possibly came about from erroneous perception bred of buttoned-down conservative lifestyle, aided and abetted by possible Machiavellian maneuvers of old manager, that opting freebodies were mostly low-spending wild local hippies, kinky voyeurs and shameless exhibitionists -- obviously bad for business -- rather than in fact representative of respectable broad cross-section of awakening global humanity mindfully embracing radical body freedom in appropriate public places as a basic human right on our fair planet.
Truth is, Stewart Springs management never gained any real conscious handle on clothing-optional policy, as did other regional rural spring resort permitting simple nudity. (Current layout isn't optimal, besides.) As mentioned elsewhere, past manager Mary finally permitted it, on approval by owner Foggy, but was so thrown off over office-manager mother's sudden death that she never hammered out any solid policy (and possibly lacked the awareness on such a delicate issue to have created one anyhow).
So all along scene was semi-anarchistic, allowing loads of wiggle room for abuse by any so inclined to ogle (including, mea culpa, writer, in less conscious times) and exhibit selves, succumbing to body-objectifying of warped 'culture', rather than lift up consciousness by attuning to higher body-mind-spirit re-integration simple mindful nudity fosters in a properly set-up, mindful environment.
One would've hoped new management might've resurrected policy once seeing the light, how such simple nudity worked hand-in-glove with healing oasis Springs when pro-actively working to raise respectability of clothing-optional scene -- as, again, had virtually every other more popular regional rural mineral springs resort in the northwest US.
That is, unless, to more cynical thinking, new 'owners' banned it, along with sweat lodge, to intentionally alienate old customer base and make self-interested designs on privatizing
and/or exclusively upscaling the historic 145-year, public-minded place easier to suit own intent, taste and ambitions...
...and the public be damned.
Some returning visitors, not knowing what triggered such a drastic policy change, only being told lamely that it was to make things "more comfortable for everyone", understandably saw it as a surreal throwback to enforced body shame that so many came to Springs in part to get away from.
Prayer had been ownership would reconsider, before finally realizing they were dead-set against it.
Again, being involved with seeming spiritual organization Incarre, which claims dedication to "re-integrating body-mind-spirit on profoundly higher levels", one would've reasonably thought that 'ownership' would've realized how simple, mindful nudity was amazingly effective and easily implemented tool towards realizing that very aim. Obviously, there was a glaring, exasperating disconnect somewhere.
Sounds like it was all talk. Mere sizzle, calculated selling point for enrolling people in long pricey workshops. Why allow people the opportunity to experience dramatic, affordable healing through simple mindful nudity, so liberating and re-integrative of mind-body-spirit in course of bathhouse visit, and thus have less need for any pricey, long-term psychotherapy?
That'd obviously be bad for business.
It'd make their shtick perhaps look more than a tad superfluous. Get rid of unfair competition that made them feel uneasy, making energies too liberated to keep any iron handle on any visitors to 'their' new acquisition. It's essentially the same self-interested energy that refuses to recognize the startling efficacy of medical cannabis in treating a host of diseases while so many respectable mad-scientist pharmaceuticals are on scene sucking up life savings, pushing sometimes truly dangerous drugs. (Ever notice how often products' endless legal disclaimers end with "May cause death"?)
more on c/o issue here, there and everywhere
In contrast, perhaps the only real danger of excessive nude sunbathing is, at worst, risking skin cancer later down the road. And admittedly it's easier burning your butt on a hot sauna bench. Can't think how skinnydipping could be dangerous, though, unless getting so used to it that one risks hassle at other public places if trying to further practice easily accustomed-to body freedom.
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(Springs history, concluded)
No time to write
Finally, for some reason it appears few other historic Northwest mineral spring resorts ever published their stories. Harbin Hot Springs's in-depth book and Breitenbush's booklet are only known exceptions.
To writer's knowledge, neither Orr, Wilbur, Jackson Wellsprings, nor Sierra Hot Springs have ever written their histories in any published form. see Other Resorts This, though some are older than Stewart's and possibly even richer in lore (and for sure less tragic). Possibly both Orr and Wilbur were stagecoach rest stops in the later 1800s. One wonders if maybe Black Bart liked to unwind with a good mineral soak amid redwoods at Orr after his latest Wells Fargo stageline holdup.
Perhaps it's not so much a mystery after all that there's never been a book on Stewart Springs.
With ongoing operations, in it for long haul, mineral spring resorts' focus is of necessity kept on present and future to stay on top of things and constantly work at fine-tuning. No time to divert limited energies trying to unearth and make sense of any elusive vanished past.
More's the pity. As every conscious being knows (and writer reminds self), past, present and future are all one on the spiritual plane -- each constantly influencing others in myriad ways.
Knowing the place's past, its beginnings and evolution, can allow visitors a fuller appreciation and keener enjoyment of the Springs...and give any aware stewards a more solid foundation of understanding for charting viable new projects to further the place in ways allowing visitors to better experience the healing affects of the portal.
Beyond often dreary human politics of place and current shocking diversionary intents, inhibiting visitors from becoming any more one with realm's wild healing properties, one listening closely could hear the land's timeless history in the rushing of the creek and the wind through the trees.
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Editorial addendum
It's perfect after all
Seventy-eight years under the Stewarts' dedicated care and over 65 years under various other land stewards since -- each with
Mendera and spirited Mexican-American>
crew's new bridge near A-frame
different visions and intents creating varied land improvements, all overlays on original pre-historic use as sacred healing ground -- have made for the grand crazy-quilt rustic springs operation we have today.
Disregarding the unfortunate and misguided notions any new 'ownership' might harbor to re-purpose or privatize place, no matter what man attempts to do to the realm it remains perfect in its imperfection...an exquisite jewel of sacred ground and healing waters that have drawn people for centuries, formerly for free, now for coin of realm, to heal, rejuvenate, and, not infrequently, connect with kindred spirits amid glad tidings of nature in the optimally relaxed way that mindfully losing one's clothes can so magically foster.
Even when place loses its way and jumps down a rabbit hole of grossly inappropriate ventures like now, on crucial level the mystic realm's supernatural powers ALWAYS transcend any human-use intent.
With new 'ownership' connected to apparent spiritual and quasi-spiritual organizations and earth's vibrational frequency increasing, one would've naturally hoped that the medicine wheel of the sacred land would now be gathering serious new momentum.
That instead it's regressing further away under self-interested, private-minded intent doesn't mean it can't bounce back in the future.
Either new 'ownership's' hearts will melt or, barring that seeming unlikelihood (writer sgive hundred to one odds against), they run place into ground until Infinite Spirit eventually foils wonky intentions to wrest healing lands away from the people.
Then they'll throw in towel, maybe redeeming selves and ultimate Springs legacy by finding and selling place at fair price to one or group who will gladly honor restoring land to former ways of culturally-diverse, open-minded ways, ideally as perennially protected, nonprofit operation.
One to be enjoyed by all on mindful paths, as land merrily resonates with the grand, albeit fitful, rebirth of our little blue ball whirling through space.
The place deserves no less.
