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America's Top Hot Spring Spas
Pamela Price January 11, 2008
The hottest of the hot from coast to coast
Things are heating up at America’s hot springs. From the revival of the grand dame resorts such as the Homestead in Hot Springs, Virginia, to the debut of California’s zen-glam Solage, where mud meets the hot springs in style—options abound.
Spa-goers have long sought out soothing solutions for their aches and pains. The spa trail may have been blazed by the Romans, who discovered the medicinal benefits of thermal waters, but many Native Americans developed their own traditions. According to Jayson Loam, author of "Hot Springs and Hot Pools in the U.S.," they believed the Great Spirit resided in the earth's center, and looked on these 'Big Medicine Fountains' as “a special gift from the creator."
See our slideshow of America's Top Hot Spring Spas.
Though American hot springs resorts cannot promise any medically approved results, they are thriving. The medical community has yet to address this preventive remedy, but the hotel and spa industry has already jumped in, pouring millions into the restoration of 19th and 20th century resorts to their original grandeur while also creating modern service menus.
The central ingredient is a bubbly hot spring—the earth’s own champagne that’s hooked a new generation of spa-goers. Spa expert and professor of history and humanities at St. Philips College in San Antonio Texas, Jonathan Paul De Vierville, defines hot springs as being heated by the earth, not by technology, and the water of which contains unadulterated minerals with certain healing properties.
So, where to find these miracle geothermal waters?
In California's Napa Valley, Calistoga is a geological mix of steaming geysers and hot marshlands that combines mineral water with volcanic ash from nearby St. Helena (not to be confused with Mt. St. Helens). It’s been one of the area’s main attractions since 1860. Here, the 89-room cottage-style Solage Calistoga has a co-ed geothermal pool and separate men's and women's hot therapy and cold plunge pools in a 20,000-square-foot facility. Their "mud tender" creates custom-blended mud cocktails for the spa's Mudslide Experience, a three-part circuit: The Mud, The Waters and The Rest.
Guest can also be cocooned in a warm blanket and invited to chill out in the SO SoundChair, a NASA-inspired experience that uses sound and tactile vibrations to simulate zero-gravity. When it’s time to eat, the Solbar Bistro’s floor-to-ceiling plate glass windows allow guests to see—and be seen.
When Mother Nature created thermal springs, she didn’t consider zip codes. Case in point, Harbin Hot Springs, which sprawls across more than 2,000 acres in California’s somewhat remote Lake County (a 2 1⁄2 hour ride from the airport in Sacramento or San Francisco). This is where the aquatic body work called Watsu originated, along with water dance and other esoteric treatments inspired by natural hot springs. Hot springs are the nerve center of this rustic resort, which was first developed in the 1870s. Accommodations are television-, children- and stereo-free. This spa is au natural, extending to their clothing-optional bathing policy.
See our slideshow of America's Top Hot Spring Spas.
What could be cooler than hot springs in the middle of the desert? In the '30s, even Al Capone could be found steeping in the waters at Two Bunch Palms in Desert Hot Springs, California. That is, when he wasn’t visiting the West Baden Springs Hotel in French Lick, Indiana—not far from his home base in Chicago—and the infamous bathhouses in Hot Springs, Arkansas. Two Bunch Palms has preserved its notorious hot spring pool, and a security officer guards the entry gate as if this were Fort Knox. No wonder celebrities find peace and quiet here, and you can easily float by a Hollywood star quite by accident in the pool.
The East Coast isn’t without its hot springs. Thomas Jefferson is said to have been a regular at the Homestead in Hot Springs, Virginia. Possibly taking a cue from the traditional three-week European spa cure, in 1818 he spent time "taking the waters" in what was then known as the Gentleman's Pool House. He would immerse himself in the hot springs thrice daily, deeming them to be "of first merit." In his honor they were renamed the Jefferson Pools, and they continued to soothe the aches and pains of those who took his endorsement to heart. Today spa-goers are invited to steep here at $15 a plunge; they can even borrow a vintage swimming suit. (Think: pantaloons!) The Homestead's 20-25 minute "Signature Mineral Bath" is a restorative treatment for those who find natural healing in the buoyant 104 degrees.
In 2008, look for the opening of a new spa at Glenwood Hot Springs, an alpine retreat in Glenwood Springs, Colorado. The original Quapaw Baths & Spa Bathhouse Row inside Hot Springs National Park in Hot Springs, Arkansas, is also scheduled to re-open its doors. The vintage 24,000-square-foot landmark, built in 1922, will once again welcome guests in May 2008, thanks to a 55-year lease between the National Park Service and Quapaw investors."This will be the only local spa facility with communal bathing," says Don Harper, Quapaw’s general manager. Expect a handsome thermal pool with fountains and whirlpools, and a full-service day spa for those who prefer the private, personal touch.
The Gilded Age meets the Modern Age in French Lick, Indiana, where billionaire William Cook invested $34 million to renovate the West Baden Springs Hotel. This new 27,000-square-foot spa has 24 treatment rooms and full-body “capsules” filled with the site’s world-famous mineral water. Here and across America, hot springs are nature’s exclusive vacation prescription and a recipe for revitalization, too.
See our slideshow of America's Top Hot Spring Spas.
