A story in the I-T about the closure of Caliente Springs Physical Therapy (“Sonoma’s Largest Independent Physical Therapy Center to Close,” Oct. 16) triggered old memories of its neighbor and Sonoma Valley’s oldest spa and resort, Agua Caliente Swimming Pool, current home of Sonoma Aquatic Club. There was a time when that pool was one of the Valley’s most popular swimming spots for locals as well as visitors. It is the last of the Valley’s once famous mineral hot springs.
The mineral springs had been used by Indians long before the first white settlers came to the area, but it was the early Spanish residents who eventually developed the site. In those days it was part of a land grant from the Mexican governor to Lazaro Pena, a young military officer who served in Monterey and Sonoma in 1829 and later. Pena established his rancho on 11 leagues (three square miles) of the land he called Rancho Agua Caliente. By the time California became a possession of the United States, Pena was dead and there were many claims on the land, which eventually was broken into four separate parcels. One of the successful claimants was General Mariano Vallejo, who got the piece that included the mineral springs. The records are unclear about how Vallejo disposed of the property, but one document indicates that American George Smith, had ownership of the site as early as 1848. But he got into a dispute with a local Spaniard, whom he killed. Although he was tried and acquitted, the incident angered the local Spanish residents and a Catholic priest in charge of the local diocese, who issued a bull of excommunication and pronounced a curse on Smith, his family and his home. Smith died two years later.
The property was bought and sold many times over four decades and the first large commercial offering of the mineral baths as part of a hotel operation appears to have begun around 1886 when it was owned by Martin K. Cady. Early guests included famous Civil War Generals Grant and Sherman. In addition to mineral baths, Cady’s hotel offered gas lights, electric bells for room service, telephone communications with San Francisco and a connection to local railroad lines. Cady also advertised that small game and trout were available in the local foothills.
Cady sold to Walter E. Dean, of the Agua Caliente Land Company, who leased the hotel, baths, wine cellar and grounds to a Dr. Nordin of Alameda, whose wife reopened the resort in 1897 claiming that its hot mineral waters were "noted for their curative properties and last season (1896) scores of afflicted people were permanently cured by bathing and partaking of the health given waters."
It wasn't until the early 1900s that the resort really took off under the ownership of Theodore Richards, who greatly expanded the mineral water supply by having a local well-driller bore more holes into the supply. By 1905 Richards claimed to have the largest mineral water swimming pool in the state at 75 by 80 feet.
Several years later while drilling even more bores for water, he reportedly struck oil at about 100 feet. Although a corporation was formed and stock sold to take advantage of this discovery, nothing came of it. Is there oil down there still? I don't know, but if the price of gas keeps going up, don't be surprised if someone starts drilling test wells on the site some day.
The original Aqua Caliente Hotel burned down in 1915, and in 1919 Richards died, but Agua Caliente Springs pool was kept in operation under various owners including T. H. Corcoran and Nino Vailetti.
Today, the mineral waters that once warmed the aching bones of early Indians, General Vallejo, and Ulysses S. Grant are still providing local swimmers with recreation and relief.
October 27, 2020 at 12:19PM
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Bill Lynch: Agua Caliente remembered - Sonoma Index-Tribune
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