Our next obscure destination is a bit unusual and requires some background info. Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and into the early twentieth, it was widely believed that mineral spring water was something close to a miracle cure for whatever historical ailment was troubling you -- consumption, dropsy, quinsy, lycanthropy, apoplexy, dysentery, ague, gout, scrofula, anemia, neurasthenia, neurosis, halitosis, hysteria, headcrabs, catarrh, clownpox, ennui, lockjaw, jazz hands, and Vidiian phage, just to name a few.
The trick was to find the spring resort that was best aligned with your delicate constitution and many ailments and was also as fashionable as you could afford to be, and go there to take the waters and undergo the latest regimen of fanciful spa treatments while also seeing and being seen for however long the local social season ran. Eventually you would feel better and return to your teeming grey city choked with coal smoke and various miasmas, and soon be in need of further spa treatments. This business model thrived for a couple of centuries but eventually faded out as all medical fads eventually do. Like the Dr. Hasenpfeffer's Patent Tonic your great-grandparents swore by, a harmonious scientific blend of radium and opium, along with 17 secret ingredients, all of which were cocaine. Or the omega-3 'n oat bran açaí breakfast bars everybody pretended to like back in the 2000s; in retrospect it was all downhill after they deleted the carbs and packed them full of coenzyme Q10 and shark cartilage instead. But I digress.
The Pacific Northwest of the 19th century was not immune to the fads of the day, and federal land programs made it easy for ambitious businessmen to pick up promising springs for next to nothing, so for a few decades Western Oregon was awash in spring resorts. Nearly all of them had vanished without a trace by the end of the Great Depression, at the latest, but vestiges of a few of them have survived to the present day, largely by accident. With that intro, you won't be surprised to learn that we're visiting one of those vestiges in this post. Present-day Wilhoit Springs is a small and obscure county park in a remote corner of Clackamas County, but in its heyday it was one of the most popular and renowned mineral spring resorts in the West, or at least the Northwest. Today nothing survives of the old resort except the springs themselves, but a page at Offbeat Oregon has a bunch of vintage photos from the resort era, and if you look around long enough you can sort of visualize how the place was laid out.
I'm not going to to rehash the entire history of the resort since that page covers it pretty well, but a lot of the info I came across about the place falls into a rough timeline, so here's another one of those:
- One thing that really struck me was how early things got going here. I mean, by Pacific Northwest standards. Wilhoit Springs first appeared in Portland newspapers way back in 1870, when a "mineral expert" claimed that the waters closely resembled those at Saratoga Springs, NY. Which at the time was possibly the most prestigious springs district outside of Western Europe. This was less than two decades out from the peak years of the Oregon Trail, and at least some of the spa's guests must have come across that way. There were no railroad links to the outside world just yet, and the main alternative to arriving by covered wagon was still to come by sailing ship around Cape Horn, which would not have been any easier on individuals of a delicate and refined constitution. I dunno, I'm just tickled by the idea that a few of the rugged tough-as-nails pioneers of 1855 eventually figured out that the no-frills, no-fun pioneer life had been somewhat oversold, and that being fussed over by attentive spa staff was actually kind of nice.
- By 1873, Wilhoit soda water could be had, bottled, for $1.50/dozen at E.B. Hill's store at 1st & Yamhill. The ad promises the water will revive one's drooping spirits, and cure whatever general debility one might be experiencing.
- Skipping forward a bit, here's a 1917 report from a local auto dealer raving about the little-known but majestic sights at Silver Falls, described as a short trip over poorly-signed bad roads from the world-famous Wilhoit Springs. Whereas now, a bit over a century later, Wilhoit Springs is an obscure destination, which can accessed from world-famous Silver Falls by a short trip over poorly-signed bad roads.
- "The Landscapes of Hot Springs and Mineral Springs in Western Oregon" a 1973 masters thesis in geography, inventorying the scattered remnants of the taking-the-waters era. Which is more interesting than you might think.
- A 1983 Oregonian article about the place says the county would really like to find some money to revive the long-forgotten park, but it isnt mentioned again in the paper until 2009. And nothing I saw when I visited looked like it was new since 2009, so they have probably not found the money yet.
- Not about Wilhoit, but related: Here's a 2004 USGS report on the many hot springs near Mt. Hood (which is obviously a significant source of heat). One of which is the spring that once served the long-vanished burg of Swim, OR, home of Mt. Hood Mineral Springs Resort, which went under during the Depression and never came back. Apparently the actual springs are fenced off now, supposedly to protect the habitat of a rare dragonfly.
- A couple of 2010s posts from the blogosphere, including a Great Grey Owl sighting and a family hike report
- A 2023 KGW segment profiling the park's longtime caretakers
The county park itself is only around 18 acres, but it's surrounded by a larger chunk of federal BLM land. 136 acres surrounding the park are managed as the Wilhoit Springs ACEC (where ACEC stands for "Area of Critical Environmental Concern"), which in turn is included as part of the 316 acre Wilhoit Springs RMA ("Recreation Management Area"). A 2016 BLM planning doc for Salem District RMAs notes that the ACEC "protects a rare stand of low elevation old growth conifer forest in the foothills of the Cascade Range". It's at least possible that proximity to the springs is what protected the area from being logged in the era when surrounding areas were being rapidly clearcut. So even if there's no medical value to mineral water in itself, this is potentially something good that came of people believing it for a long time.
While putting this post together I also ran across pages about Wilhoit Springs at FindASpring.org and TryWater.club, and realized there's an entire internet subculture of spring water enthusiasts out there that I had no idea about, and they seem to fall along a broad spectrum. With, on one hand, people who just prefer the taste over the commercial bottled stuff or the local tap water, to people who think it has health benefits, and over on the far end are people who are convinced They (you know, aliens and lizard people and Hollywood and Monsanto and Nestle and Disney and the government and George Soros. You know, They.) are working together to poison everyone with fluoride and chlorine and dihydrogen monoxide and whatever, and they're desperate to find pure raw untainted water for their unvaccinated families to drink, which -- as you might expect -- involves a great deal of Doing Your Own Research Online. As a pre-COVID example, here's a 2013 OregonHikers forum thread where a raw water person dropped in with a few questions and a mild culture clash ensued.
Speaking of which, it turns out chlorinated tap water originated in Jersey City, NJ in 1908, and exactly how that came about is kind of an interesting story.
For what it's worth, SoakOregon also has a map covering the state, but that site is more oriented to hot spring enthusiasts, which is an adjacent (but not identical) subculture, and Wilhoit isn't listed since the springs aren't hot.
But enough of that; let's pivot to the question you were impatiently waiting to ask: Did I try the water? And if so, what's it like?
Of course I tried it. I mean, I may come across as a bit overcautious sometimes, and out of this caution I have to say that Legal says not to try the water, because it's possible you won't like it and sue me for mental anguish or something. Or you might slip and fall while filling a water bottle, and I don't want to be liable for that either. But for my part, I filled a couple of 16oz. bottles from the main spring in the park, the one with the little pavilion built around it. I keep reading there's another spring elsewhere in the park but I have no idea where it is. As I was heading to the car, I passed an elderly babushka lady who was carrying several large jugs to the spring I had just left. She didn't say anything but smiled and nodded, like she was pleased to see another person who knew about and appreciated the place.
As for the taste, imagine you've dissolved a couple of Alka-Seltzer tablets (or a generic store brand, it doesn't matter) in a glass of water, and while drinking that you somehow bite your lip and it starts bleeding, and so you taste a combination of those two things. The water is somehow not quite as gross as that sounds, but it's still definitely an acquired taste. I also tried it as a mixer, based on a Reddit thread I saw in which someone else did the same. And honestly it was quite drinkable that way. I mean, it was better than drinking the water by itself, and also better than just downing a straight shot of gin by itself. Think of it as the gin-and-tonic effect, where two ingredients can be a good combo even though neither is very palatable on its own. And to take the paradox a step further, the Wilhoit Springs gin rickey is not as good as a classic G&T, but given the choice I would definitely pick the spring water over an equal-sized glass of straight tonic water. I have no idea how this sensory phenomenon works; it just does, ok?
