The ingredients so happily blended in this water

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes

Photo above: This is an 1894 photo of Thompson’s Bromine & Arsenic Springs. The people in the photo are labeled as Uncle Billy Lambert, Dr & Mrs A. M. Carter, and the animals are Buffalo Bill & Mac. A Miss Boulin is standing by the gate.

Today it’s known as Healing Springs, and because of the high concentration of minerals found in its water, it is still, 136 years after its discovery by white settlers in 1885, believed to have great beneficial effects upon a wide variety of ailments.

The springs, near Crumpler, NC in Ashe County, were discovered in July of that year by young Willie Barker, son of Eli Barker, who owned the land they were on.

The story goes that Willie was helping his father plow corn on a hillside, and his father sent him to the branch to find a spring from which to bring him some water to drink. Willie relates:

“I went across the road and got in the branch and walked down it, stooping along under the bushes and grape vines until I felt cold water under my feet. I then commenced looking for and soon found the cold water running down the rock. I scratched around until I found a place large enough to get the cup of water for father. He sent me back for more water and said it was the best he had ever drunk. My hand and arm were very badly sore. (poison oak). The next morning it was almost well. We went back the next day and father worked in the spring with his hands that had sores on them, too (also poison oak). The following day they were nearly well. Then everybody got to using the water and it had cured a power of folks. Sometimes 300 come here in one day.”

To which the Chattanooga Daily Times added: “Many came and were healed of all sorts of ailments. They brought their sore-backed horses, galled steers, and dog-bitten hogs, bathed their wounds in the ‘healing waters,’ and cured them.”

History doesn’t tell us how they crossed paths, but Eli Barker was sought out by one Hiram V. Thompson of Glade Spring, VA, 50 miles away, to purchase the property. By October Thompson had closed the deal.

What did Thompson know about the curative properties of spring waters? Nothing. But he was a smart businessman.

Captain Thompson had begun his career as an engineer on the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad, and moved into the hotel business. By 1885 he had already been in the hotel business for 24 years, having built the successful Thompson House Hotel in 1868 in Glade Spring. 

That hotel was advertised as a venue for summer boarders, and there lies the reason for Thompson’s interest in the springs at Crumpler. Thompson no doubt intuited immediately that a mineral springs would attract well heeled clients from the lowlands seeking to get away from summer humidity and yellow fever, willing to pay top dollar for unique spa accommodations.

“I have purchased the property,” Thompson told the Lenoir Topic on November 25, 1885, “about 20 acres of land including the springs, and am now trying to form a stock company with a capital of $50,000 which amount will be sufficient to improve it well. I am a paralytic since 12 years (55 years old) and unable to attend business properly; therefore I would like for some energized go-ahead young man, who can command capital, to take hold at once and push things. I have already commenced shipping the water, which ships well.”

Thompson didn’t ever call his waters ‘Healing Springs.’ He named them ‘Bethesda Healing Springs’ in the steady ads he placed from March-November 1886 in the Abingdon Weekly Virginian seeking investors for the resort hotel he wanted to build at Crumpler. 

He switched brand names in July. “The name of the much talked of ‘Bethesda Healing Springs,’ owned by Mr. H.V. Thompson, of Glade Spring, has been changed by the proprietor to the “Thompson Bromade [sic] and Arsenic Springs,’ because water of an inferior quality is now sold by other parties as Bethesda Healing Water,” reported the Abingdon Weekly Virginian on July 22.

What an odd thing to modern ears to hear arsenic and healthful springs spoken of as allies!

But Thompson had probably encountered the work of Dr. Thomas Clemens of Frankfurt. “The study of mineral waters is an old pet of mine,” Clemens had said in the German medical journal Deutsche Klinik in 1859. “Many of them contain Arsenic in combination with Bromine, and are well known for their roborating and alterating qualities.”

Clemens reported how he came upon the idea of compounding arsenic bromide, and that he found it was useful in treating recurrent skin eruptions, swollen glands and “syphilitic” conditions. He even described a case of a breast tumor, in which the patient took four drops of arsenic bromide twice daily in a glass of water for more than a year, and her tumor disappeared completely.

In 1885 after purchasing the springs, Thompson had wasted no time in hiring Dr. Henry Froehling, an analytical and consulting chemist from Richmond, to scrutinize their mineral content. Of 18 elements identified, ‘sodium bromide’ was down the list at 10th place, and ‘sodium arsenate’ at 13th. Didn’t matter. They made the list, and Clemens’ medical theories were widely respected. So “Thompson’s Bromine and Arsenic Springs” stuck.

By 1887 Thompson found his investors, and the ads stopped. Business boomed: “Thirteen four-horse wagons are now engaged in hauling mineral water from the Bromide [sic] Arsenic Healing Springs to the railway depot at Seven Mile Ford, VA, to be shipped to various points,” reported the Fayetteville Weekly Observer on April 14, 1887. “More wagons are to be put on the route. It is reported that an order for 9,000 cases of the water has been received at the springs from Europe.”

That same year, the demand for Thompson’s spring water prompted the state to construct the first road from Ashe County’s upper valley to the outside world. NC used convict labor to construct a wagon track from Jefferson to Marion, VA by way of Thompson’s then under construction hotel. Once the road was constructed, an average of 50 wagons per day hauled water from the springs to the railroad at Marion.

A national advertising campaign signed up 60 agents who complained constantly that not enough Thompson Bromine-Arsenic Water was provided them.

Thompson Springs, the hotel, opened May 1, 1892. The spa was such a success that eight separate cabins were constructed to handle the overflow of guests. 

Thompson and his wife Pamela successfully operated the hotel they had built, and are credited with the development of the resort. J. Kirby Hurt acquired the property in 1907 at a sheriff’s sale, according to the National Register of Historic Places nomination form, and the Thompsons disappeared from history at that point.

The resort hotel that at the last was called ‘The Healing Springs Hotel’ remained in operation under one owner or another until 1962, when it was destroyed by a fire. 

The site was accepted to the National Register of Historic Places in 1976. “The mineral spring spas of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were not only centers for rejuvenating health, but were the most popular social centers,” argues the nomination form. 

“Thompson’s Bromine and Arsenic Springs is a good representative of a segment of our social heritage, of which only a few survive. For this reason it becomes especially significant as an archaeological site.”

Sources: https://thehomeopathiccollege.org/mr-muellers-articles/a-homeopathic-journey-to-the-healing-springs-of-ashe-county-north-carolina/

www.newrivernotes.com/nc/heal1887.htm

The New River Controversy, A New Edition, by Thomas J. Schoenbaum

“Bromine Arsenic Springs,” Union Republican (Winston Salem), Sept 19, 1895, pg 1. 

“Fountain of Health,” Chattanooga Daily Times, Aug 18, 1895, pg 16.

“Western North Carolina Mineral Springs Still Attract Thousands During Summer,” Charlotte Observer, July 23, 1939 p. 52

National register of historic places nomination form

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