1890: The First Mention of a 'Swimming Pool' in Utah

Rainbow Gardens, in Ogden, had a swimming pool from the 1920s to the 1970s. This photo was taken about 1950, back when ballroom dancing was still in a popular phase.


THE very first mention in Utah newspapers mentioning "swimming pools" was in the Salt Lake Times of April 30, 1890.
"The circular bathing house, the center of it under a glass roof, is a swimming pool. Water is brought in pipes from Beck's Hot Spring," the Times article stated.
A few months earlier, in the Times of Jan, 16, 1890, reported this about the same swimming pool and unusually cold weather:
"The cold weather has not affected the water in the large swimming pool of the Natatorium. The water is 100 degrees in the pool and 120 degrees in the private baths."
-Some months later, on July 8, 1890, the Times newspaper reported on a $200,000 plan to create an even better and larger bathing house near the hot springs. 
-Mormon pioneers learned from the area's Native Americans about the hot springs north of Salt Lake City. By 1850, an official resort was located there.
-When the 20th Century arrived, a shift soon started to colder water swimming pools in Utah. By the 1920s, Lagoon Park in Farming, had a large outdoor pool. Not to say that hot springs didn't still exist -Beck Hot Springs continued until 1951. There was also a Utah Hot Spring, located near the Box Elder-Weber County line, that lasted until the late 1950s. Rainbow Gardens, at the mouth of Ogden Canyon, also had a swimming pool that remained open until 1972.
-It is also interested to note when swimming pool sanitation became a health concern in Utah.
"Take bath before swimming to be edict of measure," was a Jan. 21, 1917 headline in the Salt Lake Telegram newspaper. Later that year on July 31, a new State law took effect that required every person who wanted to enter a public swimming pool had to take a "bath" (shower).
Also, with the same bill, State Inspectors would not regularly scrutinize public pools for sanitation. In addition, any person with the contagious disease was banned from using a swimming pool.

Ogden’s ‘Power Place’ never got juiced up ….

                           Rainbow Gardens, center, as viewed along the Indian Trail.

By Lynn Arave

THE year 1890 was an ambitious time in Ogden City. A Methodist University, dubbed “Utah University” was being built on the present location of Ogden High School. (This “University” was never finished and was gone in four years.) Also, a large resort and housing development named “Power Place” simply never materialized, despite extensive plans.

This Power Place, planned to be 580 acres, was to be located near the mouth of Ogden Canyon (where today’s Rainbow Gardens is). With an electric power plant operating at the Canyon’s mouth in 1890, hence the name of the development.

Power Avenue Junction, Farr View, Short Street, Bow Avenue, Factory Street, Lake Street and Graham Avenue were some of the street names in Power Place, according to the Ogden Standard-Examiner of April 18, 1890.

                                   A historical marker near the mouth of Ogden Canyon.

However, a nation-wide financial panic in 1893 scuttled the plans. In 1905-1906, a single Victorian building was constructed at the mouth of Ogden Canyon – the Ogden Canyon Sanitarium, with a hotel, dining room and mineral baths. Trolley and wagons offered transportation to this resort, but a fire in 1927 destroyed it completely.

A.V. Smith bought the land in 1928 and rebuilt the resort in bricks to create El Monte Springs. Wrestling matches, swimming, private mineral baths, boating, marathon ballroom dancing and even motorcycle hill climbs were all offered at this resort for almost four years.

The 1929 Great Depressing effect had closed El Monte by 1932. It sat dormant until the early 1940s when Ogden’s Cowboy Mayor, Harman W. Peery purchased it and renamed it Riverside Gardens. It offered mineral baths, swimming and dancing.

      

                        The Rainbow Gardens sign in the early 1950s.

In 1946, Peery’s son-in-law, Robert W. King  took over operations, with his wife, Rosanne Peery King, and renamed it Rainbow Gardens. A bowling alley was added in 1961. By the 1970s, swimming pools were not popular enough and the Kings opened the Rainbow Gardens Gift Shop where the former dancing hall and indoor swimming pool were. In the spring of 1976, the Greenery Restaurant began in the former lobby to the old swimming pool. The bowling alley later closed and a souvenir/gift shop took its place.

                                          Fred J. Kiesel

-The hot springs at the mouth of Ogden Canyon was the main attraction to why resort development centered there. It was a miner who claimed the hot springs and surrounding land first. Fred J. Kiesel, Ogden businessman and eventually Ogden’s first non-Mormon mayor, along with two over investors, purchased the spring and land in the 1870s and offered free mineral baths.

        The hot springs, private and inaccessible now, are located just off the highway.

According to the Ogden Standard-Examiner of Feb. 27, 1883, Bethesda Spring was the original name of these hot springs, named after a pool of water in Jerusalem, as mentioned in St. John. The claim was that the Ogden hot springs could improve health, with their minerals and soothing temperature.

The water’s minerals were analyzed and its temperature was as high as 140 degrees.

-The Ogden Herald newspaper of Aug. 27, 1879, mentioned the first known reference to a “Bathing party” at these hot springs, with a group of gentlemen and ladies participating. Swimming lessons were also given.

-NOTES: These hot springs at the mouth of Ogden Canyon are not publicly accessible today. They have caused a lot of vandalism and crime and the owners of Rainbow Gardens have posted them off limits -- no trespassing.
-Also, today, the original El Monte name for the mouth of Ogden Canyon resort lives on as the title for the golf course, located to the northwest.

Northern Utah once boasted 8 Hot Springs Resorts

                                                              Crystal Springs.


By Lynn Arave

 THEY used to be one of the hottest things along the Wasatch Front.
Lots has been written about the old historic Utah resorts along the shores of the Great Salt Lake, but ....
Once, hordes of swimmers and bathers enjoyed hot spring resorts too. Most of these resorts traced their roots to the pioneer era. In the first half of their 20th century heyday, there were eight such hot springs stretching from Box Elder County to Utah County and from Morgan to Wasatch counties.

                                               Camping at Crystal Springs.

The first, Beck Hot Springs, was used very soon after the Mormon pioneers arrived in the valley. In fact, it was the influx of gold-seeking 49ers in 1849 who loved the water that prompted Brigham Young to appropriate $6,000 for a public bathhouse there.
The hot springs, believed to have healing powers, were a great source of relaxation for those stopping in Salt Lake City -- the only sizable settlement between Missouri and California in 1849-50.
Rates were $1 for two to four people and $3.50 for a group of 16-24 people.
"It came to be a wonderful place for the Mormons," Utah historian Brigham Madsen said.
Today, only two hot springs resorts (both located in Box Elder County) remain -- Belmont Springs in Plymouth and Crystal Springs in Honeyville.
Why did the other six die out?
The post-World War II generation abandoned them for a new world of many diversified interests like TV, movie theaters and sporting events.
Jonathon Bronson, manager for Crystal Springs, said it has been difficult to stay open. The resort has had a lot of owners since Walt Chamberlain opened it in 1901.
"We have a loyal following," he said, referring to regular patrons who comprise some of the 200,000 people who annually visit Crystal Springs.


Also, the camping resort as well as the waterslide have helped Crystal survive.
Britany Holmgren, manager of Belmont Springs, believes rising insurance and liability rates have been the main reason for resorts closing.
"We have such a problem with people breaking in to skinny dip," she said.
With one pool 35 feet deep, liability is a key issue there.
Besides escalating insurance premiums, upkeep is also high for hot springs resorts. Piping wears out quickly from the mineral water.
Holmgren agrees that better indoor plumbing and more home hot tubs hurt the business of hot springs resorts. So did the belief by many that the mineral water didn't really have healing powers after all.
She said now there's a revival going on and many are coming to Belmont who believe again that the water has some healing properties.
Holmgren attributes the survival of Belmont to a diversification.
Today, it is a haven for scuba divers who use its 90- to 100-degree pools in all but the hottest of summer months. Raising lobsters is also another profitable sidelight for Belmont.
In fact, the scuba diving and lobster raising make more money for the resort than the hot pools do. Belmont also has a nine-hole golf course and camping and RV hookups.
Two of the historic hot springs resorts, Rainbow Gardens in Ogden and the Homestead (formerly Schneitter's Hot Pots) in Midway, have modified themselves dramatically to stay viable.
For example, Rainbow is into hot gifts now, rather than hot water. The late owner, Robert King, of Rainbow Gardens once said the resort was losing money in the late 1960s and closed its indoor and outdoor pools. Today, the former indoor pool is terraced into part of the Rainbow Gardens gift shop.
King's not sure why people stopped coming but said perhaps it was all the competing interests.
(There is still a primitive hot springs just east of Rainbow Gardens, at the mouth of Ogden Canyon, on the south side. However, this hot springs is on private property and its use is discouraged.)
The Homestead actually rediscovered some of its hot spring beginnings in the past few years with warm water scuba diving. The Homestead also has golfing and lodging as its primary focus.
The Utah Hot Springs (also called Ogden Hot Springs) in Pleasant View closed in about 1970. That place had an indoor and outdoor pool. The outdoor pool had a great slippery slide too.
(Greenhouse operations replaced the hot springs pools there.)
Wasatch Warm Springs/Beck Springs in Salt Lake City hasn't been used for swimming since 1976 and at one time housed the Children's Museum of Utah.
Como Springs in Morgan shut down in 1985 after a 1980 fire, 1983 flood damage and decreasing profits made it too costly to maintain. Saratoga, on the shores of Utah Lake, ceased operations in the early 1990s.
There's also Lava Hot Springs, Idaho, some three hours north of Salt Lake City, that still thrives as a hot springs resort town. But it, too, has had its ups and downs and had to change with the times to survive. It added an Olympic-size outdoor pool in 1972 and broadened its focus to other activities, like miniriver running.
Today, Utahns prefer the waterslide type atmosphere, too. This is evident by Lagoon-a-Beach at Lagoon, Cherry Hills resort in Fruit Heights, Raging Waters in Salt Lake and Seven Peaks Water Park in Provo.
Indeed, Crystal Springs opened a water slide in 1981 and has the state's only year-round slide.

                                       Twin water slides at Crystal Springs.



-Why do these eight hot springs exist in northern Utah?
Paul Jewell, associate professor of geology and geophysics at the University of Utah, said the Great Basin is an area where the crust of the Earth is being stretched. That makes the crust thinner and means the mantle of the Earth, a warm layer, is closer to the surface.
Water circulates through the crust of the Earth and is heated at these shallow depths. With some good natural plumbing, these hot springs are usually associated with breaks along segments of the Wasatch Fault.
It is also worth noting there are a few other, lesser-known hot springs in northern Utah. For example, "Stinky Springs" is located near Thiokol, west of Brigham City. It was never developed commercially, and vandals have now destroyed its makeshift facilities.
Cache Valley also used to have Loganna in Logan. However, by the early 1980s, this waterslide/swimming resort was sold to accommodate a housing project.


SOURCES: "Utah A Guide to the State," by Ward J. Roylance; and Digitalnewspapers.org


(-Adapted from a Sept. 12, 1999 Deseret News article by Lynn Arave.)

-NOTE: The author, Lynn Arave, is available to speak to groups, clubs, classes or other organizations about Utah history at no charge. He can be contacted by email at: lynnarave@comcast.net