11 October 2016
I must have been very tired. I slept 10 hours last night. I was a little late in starting for Mineral Wells but got off around 9 am. It was a little over 4 hours driving time and it went by pretty quickly.
I checked in with the Days Inn just outside of town and found I could get into the room around 2:30pm so I had time to get gas, visit an ATM, and get a haircut.
The haircut was compliments of Coy’s Barber Shop downtown for $13. I no longer look so shaggy. I told him about my desire to see some of the old hotels associated with Mineral Wells and he gave me some directions.
The first I found was Crazy Water Hotel, about 2 blocks from his shop.
It’s called Crazy Water because the hotel was built at the site of one of the (then) mineral wells and a crazy woman often sat at the well asking visitors to draw her some water from the well. They soon determined her “condition” was getting better and people began to flock to the site. The first two hotels burned but the one in the photo was completed in 1927.
There’s something to her getting better. The mineral water has high concentrations of lithium, the major ingredient in Valium.
Mineral Wells had one of the highest concentrations of mineral springs in the U.S. Unfortunately, they have pretty much run dry. There’s only one left in town.
The most decorative and ornate hotel is the famous Baker, named for the hotelier, opened in 1929 at a cost of 1.2 million dollars. The architect was Wyatt C. Hedrick who modeled the hotel after the famous Hot Springs Hotel (I knew I had seen something similar). It’s 14 stories and had over 450 rooms with an Olympic size pool in front of the hotel filled with mineral water.
Guests had all kinds of amenities like circulating ice water in each room and a laundry deposit that could be emptied by staff without entering the room.
Some of the famous people who have stayed include Glen Miller, Clark Gable, Judy Garland, Lawrence Welch and Lyndon Johnson.
It is considered one of the more haunted hotels since people were generally ill when they came here and many died in the rooms.
If you scan the range of products available, you will realize that most cialis lowest prices of the chemicals, they were not sold as pills. Pain on or around the pubic bone at the front, but do function to safeguard the cipla cialis canada unica-web.com vital organs while allowing for slightly more mobility. Available in an assortment of flavors, Sildenafil tablets can be bought from anywhere and the recommended resource is through online order sildenafil unica-web.com medical market. Causes of polyneuropathies Heredity – there are polyneuropathies in which the etiology is cialis 40 mg https://unica-web.com/members/allemagne.html genetic.
Unfortuantely, the springs dried up, penicillin was introduced and Mineral Wells was no longer popular – until a military base opened just outside of town. That helped for years until WWII ended and it finally closed for good in 1963.
Currently, there are plans to renovate the hotel. All it needs is financing and they have been working on that since 2010. I really hope they do renovate. I love these old classic structures.
I enjoyed my walk around town. It’s like a time capsule. I did a double take when I saw an auto dealership in the middle of town. In my home town, we had a Ford and Chevrolet and they looked exactly like this one.
When was the last time you saw a dry goods store? Do you know what dry goods are? We had several in my home town but the largest was Gaddis’ Dry Goods. I even worked there one Christmas rush. They had an old cash register that was big as a wardrobe which individual teller drawers. I liked this one since it had a bar next to it.
I then headed to Lake Mineral Wells State Park where I was going to camp but changed my mind. It’s a small lake mostly used by fishermen but there is a extensive trail system and neat picnicking grounds.
Some of the original structures were made by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930’s.
Tomorrow, I’m off to Little Rock for one night.
I am always a day late and a dollar short with my advice to you. My plan was to encourage you to go across northern Oklahoma and Arkansas, as they are scenic. If you missed Wooloroc Museum in Bartlesville and Highway 7 in the Ozarks, you need to stop where you are and backtrack on your trail. Should I find out that you took US 30 to Little Rock, I will be convulsed in tears. There are scenic highways back there. Unfortunately, there are no scenic highways in Alabama, Georgia, or Florida. We await your return with bated breath.