The text is from Appleton's Handbook of American Travel, The Southern Tour, published in 1866, by D. Appleton & Co., New York.
The photographs above are from the Touring Turn-of-the-Century America: Photographs from the Detroit Publishing Company, 1880-1920 , from the American Memories Collection, Library of Congress.
Not knowing which of the several routes our traveller may
desire to follow, we shall, instead of journeying in any prescribed line from Spring to
Spring, jump at once to that central and most famous point, the White Sulphur.
This favorite Spa is on Howard's Creek, in Greenbrier County,
directly on the edge of the Great
Western Valley and near the base of the Alleghany range of mountains, which rise
at all points in picturesque and winning beauty.
Kate's Mountain, which recalls some heroic exploits of an Indian maiden of long ego, is one fine point in the scene, southward; while the Greenbrier Hills lie two miles away, toward the west and the lofty Alleghany towers up majestically on the north and east. The Hot Spring is 88 miles distant on the north; the Sweet Spring 17 miles to the eastward; the Salt and the Red Springs, 24 and 41 miles, respectively, on the south; and the Blue Spring, 22 miles away, on the west. The vicinage of the White Sulphur is as grateful in natural attraction as the waters am admirable in medicinal value. Its locale is a charming valley, environed, like that of Rasselas, by soaring hills, and the summer home in its midst has all the conveniences and luxuries of a veritable Castle of Indolence.
Fifty acres, perhaps, are occupied with lawns and walks, and the cabins and cottages of the guests, built in rows around the public apartments, the dining room, the ball-room, etc, give the place quite a merry, happy village air. There is Alabama Row, Louisiana, Paradise, Baltimore, and Virginia Rows, Georgia, Wolf and Bachelor's Rows, Broadway, the Colonnade, Virginia Lawn, the Spring, and other specialties.
The cottages are built of wood, brick, and of logs, one story high; and, altogether, the social arrangement and spirit here, as at all the surrounding Springs, has a pleasant, quiet, home sentiment, very much more desirable than the metropolitan temper of more accessible and more thronged resorts.
It is said that the site of these Springs was once the favorite hunting ground of the Shawneee, a tradition supported by the remains found in various parts of the valley, in the shape of implements of the chase and ancient graves. It is not known precisely at what period the Spring was discovered. Though the Indians undoubtedly knew its virtues, there is no record of its being used by the whites until 1778. Logcabins ware first erected on the spot in 1784-'86, and the place began to assume something of its present aspect about 1820. Since then it has been yearly improved until it is capable of pleasantly housing some 1,500 guests.
The spring bubbles up from the earth in the lowest part of the valley, and is covered by a pavilion, formed of twelve Ionic columns, supporting a dome, crowned by a statue of Hygeia. The Spring is at an elevation of 2,000 feet above tide-water. Its temperature is 62 Fahrenheit, and is uniform through all seasons. Its average yield is about thirty gallons per minute, and the supply is neither diminished in dry weather, nor increased by the longest rains.
Visit the Blue Sulphur Springs, Greenbrier County, West Virginia
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Copyright Valerie F. Crook, 1998, all rights reserved.