State

All Quiet At Hot Springs The crouds of pc*oplck and fabulous hotels in the wilderness, and their disappearanee — hard 14» believe. By PHY LLIS TYLER There is something magical about the spot on the French Broad River in Madison County where the town of Hot Springs now stands. The Indians believed that powerful water spirits lived there — in the river, in the cold mountain springs gushing out of the rocks, and most of all in the warm min¬ eral waters of the medicinal springs along the river bank. The Indians had great reverence for the healing qual¬ ities of these hot springs and the area around was considered holy ground and a place of peace. Because the Indians never fought among themselves for the right to use the springs, they did not fight off the white men. Henry Reynolds and Thomas Morgan, who "discovered" them in 1778. Almost overnight the springs became tremendously popular. The Patton brothers from Asheville built a hotel there which, according to early records, housed 1000 guests a night in the summer months. The mar¬ vel is that a hotel in the wilderness reached only by dangerous and dif¬ ficult mountain trails, should have had any guests at all. Zeb Vance Clerked In 1802 the legislature authorized the laying out of a tow n beside the French Broad River to accomodate the great throngs of travelers journeying to the hotel. It was to be called Spaightsville to honor Governor Richard Dobbs Spaighi and presumably it was plotted where the present town of Hot Springs is today, although no one knows for sure that the town of Spaightsville ever existed. The fame of the springs as a cure for almost all the ills known to man must have drawn people to them, but that they came in such numbers is still hard to believe. Among famous North Car¬ olinians who spent time there was the young Zcbulon Vance who clerked one 18 summer for "Uncle Billy" Vance. In I830 the hotel burned to the ground. The next year the Pattons built what is described as an even more magnifi¬ cent edifice than the first hotel. It was 500 feet long and its front porch had thirteen columns to represent the thir¬ teen states of the Union. The fact that guests sometimes shared the porch with chickens and other barnyard ani¬ mals seems not to have taken anything from its grandeur. Governor Fowle who visited in I860 writes. "Nowhere in America have I found a sweeter, more restful spot." The Most Splendid The stage coach line from Grecnc- ville. Tennessee to Greenville. North Carolina was operated by a Colonel R. Rumbaugh. He realized that the civil war was coming and was looking about for a safe place for his family. In I86I he bought out the Pattons. His choice was a shrewd one for no armies ever came near the springs although the colonel's wife once heard that the Yankees were coming and burned the wooden bridge over the French Broad. The colonel's wife was reputed to be a beautiful, high spirited lady with a will of iron and. to illustrate, the story is told of the theft of her favorite horse by a Yankee officer whereupon she told him to give it back and he did. It is a little hard to fit this tale with the claim that no Yankees at all came to what was then the town of Warm Springs. The next year the Southern Railroad was built to Warm Springs and in 1 869 the name of the town was changed to its present one of Hot Springs. In 1884 the second Patton House burned. Colonel Rumbaugh sold the springs and the land to a group of bankers who called themselves the Southern Improvement Association. They built a hotel so elegant that it rivaled the Biltmore Palace in Asheville. It cost so much to build, however, that the bankers went bank¬ rupt within a few months and Colonel Rumbaugh got the place back. The hotel, called The Mountain Park, had the first golf course in the Southeast. For the next 25 years this third and most splendid of all the luxury' hotels on this spot attracted the rich and the famous from all over the world. Kings, queens, millionaires, and statesmen slept there. The colonel's daughter. Lent ot Hie hotel» built in Hot Springs wo» this "rather dreory brick building". Built otter the Mountain Pork burned m 1 920, it never goined the glamour of it» predecet»or». Thi» »nop»hot, token in the corly »ummer ot 1976, moy be one of the lo»t prior to it» burning. The tmoll white building ot right hou»e» the famed »pring THE STATE, JUNE 1978