“There were strategically placed outhouses that people whould have to rush to.

“People would come to French Lick, dip a dipper into Pluto Spring for a drink, then walk through the gardens slowly, carrying a cane,” she said. Augustine, Florida – a place where we’d both sampled the Fountain of Youth, an artesian well said to have curative powers – filled me in on how Pluto Springs worked. Artful lobby in the French Lick Springs Hotel (courtesy French Lick Resort) From this grand lobby, guests move on to the hotel’s dining areas, the casino, their guest rooms, or the spa. On the National Register of Historic Places, the hotel is distinctly American, an imposing building of buff yellow “French Lick brick.” Inside its doors, the marbled columns and walls are an illusion, using a faux textured marbling technique called scagliola that imparts an elegance you’d swear was marble. Trains ran daily between Chicago and French Lick, making it a socialite destination and a favorite getaway for political party powwows. Part “cure-all,” part advertisement for the health resort that welcomed its first guests in 1845, Pluto Water was exported around the United States from a bottling plant at French Lick.īy 1905, French Lick Springs Hotel became a sprawling complex, with a parade of famous guests over the decades, from Ava Lowle Willing, who divorced John Jacob Astor IV in 1909, to Howard Hughes and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. One of three springs once available to guests at the French Lick Springs Hotel, Pluto Spring is best identified with Pluto Water. You can’t escape the sound of flowing water while in French Lick The Power of Pluto Rival French Lick Springs used the devilish Roman god of the underworld as its pitchman. Modeled on Baden-Baden in Germany, West Baden Springs, opened in 1855, adopted a Germanic-looking imp, Sprudel, as the mascot for its spring water. Less than a mile apart in the same spring-blessed valley, the French Lick Springs Hotel and West Baden Springs Hotel competed for customers by offering a setting rivaling the elegance of European spa destinations. Named for the mineral salts once mined in this valley southwest of Indianpolis, Indiana, French Lick became of the focus of spa travel in the United States in the late 1800s, thanks to its two spacious resorts with mineral springs. “The bath is there, if you’d like to try it.” While getting ready for a much-needed massage at the Spa at French Lick Springs Hotel, I asked my therapist, Lisa, about the namesake springs.

Historic building atop one of the springs of French Lick

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