The idea for this trip started while I was reviewing Kathryn Stolle's manuscript for her upcoming book, "How to Get Great Spa on the Road to Health and Wellness." In it she mentioned working at The Greenbrier in West Virginia in the late 60’s.

"The Greenbrier Mineral Bath Department, as it was officially known, was limited to water therapies drawing on the famous sulphur spring water for which The Greenbrier’s home town of White Sulphur Springs was named. The predominantly water-based therapies included a variety of sulphur baths, scotch hose, Swiss shower and massage, but was a far cry from today’s sophisticated, contemporary Greenbrier Spa. After my first treatment with a scotch hose, I decided that perhaps I’d stick to swimming instead.

"We used to travel to nearby Sweet Chalybeate Springs, formerly “Red” springs and famous (self-proclaimed) for having one of the highest iron contents of any springs in the world. We would pack a picnic lunch and spend an afternoon there on our days off. Though the surrounding concrete apron was old and crumbling in some places, the waters were fresh and warm at 79°F with a whopping 800 gallons flow-through per minute. In the back of the property was a run-down building, an old hotel whose ghostly presence recalled the prosperous heyday of the region’s hot springs spas of the late 19^th and early 20^th century. Interestingly, there were never more than a handful of people enjoying the peaceful atmosphere and remote location.

"It was Sweet Chalybeate’s warm pools, surrounded by lush green grass so remarkably soft and velvety beneath one’s toes, that were so magical and that lured us back time and again during the two years that we called White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia home."

I had been to The Greenbrier, but I had never heard of Sweet Chalybeate Springs (pronounced kə-lē-bē-ət) and was curious. I Googled it and ran across The Springs Tour from Monroe County Tourism in Union, WV. Clearly, I had been unaware of lots of springs where people have come to "take the waters" for centuries. I decided I wanted to see them and, two months later, I was on the Springs Trail with my friend Lea. We drove from Delaware and, over seven days and 1,070 miles, we searched for, sometimes found and sometimes experienced the following historic springs & resorts as well as a few other places of interest:

	Berkeley Springs State Park in Berkeley Springs, WV - on US 522 near I-70
	The Jefferson Pools in Warm Springs, VA - on US 220
	Falling Spring Falls, VA on US 220 between Warm Springs and White Sulphur Springs
	The Greenbrier in White Sulphur Springs, WV (where we stayed for two nights) - on US 60 off of I-64
	Sweet Chalybeate Springs, VA (also once known as Red Sweet Springs) - on VA-311
	Sweet Springs Resort, WV - on WV-311
	Hanging Rock Raptor Observatory, Peters Mountain, Monroe County, WV - off of Monroe County Road 15
	Salt Sulphur Springs, WV - on US 219 south of Union (settled in 1774)
	Hunter Springs, WV - west on WV-122
	Creekside Resort, WV (where we stayed for three nights) - west on WV-122
	Red Sulphur Springs, WV - south on WV-25 to the intersection of WV-27
	Pence Springs, WV - WV-27 to WV-12 north

On our journey, we crossed the Great Eastern Divide, saw absolutely spectacular scenery and met wonderfully friendly people. We passed near other springs that we did not try to find – Shannondale Springs, Jordan White Sulphur Springs, Orkney Springs, Fauquier White Sulphur Springs, Rawley Springs, Stribling Stings, Bath Alum Springs, Rockbridge Baths, Rockbridge Alum Springs, Healing Springs, Dibbrell’s (Dagger’s) Springs, Roxalia Springs, Montgomery White Sulphur Springs, Yellow Sulphur Springs, Gray Sulphur Springs, Bargers Springs and Blue Sulphur Springs. Perhaps I'll see them on another trip.

In the following months, I will write about each of the springs we saw starting with Berkeley Springs. As they are written, you can click on the names above to get to the articles. I hope you enjoy reading about them as much as I enjoyed visiting them.

I want to thank The Greenbrier for loaning the following books to me that have enabled me (and you) to learn more about the springs that I visited:

Historic Springs of the Virginias: A Pictorial History by Stan Cohen

Letters Descriptive of the Virginia Springs: The roads leading thereto, and the doings thereat, 1834 & 1836 by Peregrine Prolix

Springlore in Virginia by Marshall Fishwick

The Springs of Virginia: Life, Love, and Death at the Waters 1775 -1900 by Perceval Reniers

A number of other books about the history of these springs are available on PDF that you can read by clicking on the title:

1809 A Tour Through Part of Virginia, in the Summer of 1808 including an account of...the Different Medicinal Springs, Hot and Cold Baths visited by the Author by John Caldwell

1831 On Baths and Mineral Waters by Joseph Bell

1832 Notes on the State of Virginia by Thomas Jefferson

1835 Letters Descriptive of the Virginia Springs: The roads leading thereto, and the doings thereat by Peregrine Prolix

1839 The White Sulphur Papers, or Life at the Springs of Western Virginia by Mark Pencil

1846 The Mineral Springs of Western Virginia; with Remarks on Their Use and the Diseases to Which They are Applicable by William Burke, M.D. Proprietor of Red Sulphur Springs

1848 The Invalid's Guide to the Virginia Hot Springs: Containing an Account of the Medical Properties of These Waters, with Cases Illustrative of their Effects by Thomas Goode, M.D. Proprietor of the Virginia Hot Springs

1857 The Virginia Springs; Comprising an Account of All the Principal Mineral Springs of Virginia, with Remarks on the Nature and Medical Applicability of Each by John J. Moorman, M.D., For many years Resident Physician at the White Sulphur Springs

1863 Prior to June 20, 1863, West Virginia was a part of Virginia (Western Virginia).*

1870 The Virginia Tourist. Sketches of the Springs and Mountains of Virginia; Containing ...Accounts of its Mineral Springs and a Medical Guide to the Use of the Waters by Edward A. Pollard

1881 White Sulphur Springs (Col. Geo. L. Peyton Superintendent)

1900 Sweet Chalybeate Springs, Virginia by B.F. Eakle, Manager

Unfortunately, Perceval Reniers' The Springs of Virginia: Life, Love, and Death at the Waters 1775 -1900 is not available as a PDF. I have found it to be the best at explaining what life was like on the ~170 mile Springs Tour:

"By the 1830's, after more than half a century of trial and error, the Southerner had evolved his method of taking the waters: he took them in quantity and he took them seriatim. That is, he made the Springs Tour, visiting as many resorts in a season as time and money would allow. The phrase at home in the lowlands was, he was going 'up to the Springs," always in the plural. He might own a cottage at the White Suphur and expect to put in most of his time there, but he went to "the Springs" just the same; it was taken for granted that before he returned to the lowlands again he would sample the water and the company at anywhere from three to half a dozen other places, a few days here and a week there, if water and company agreed with him.

"The region of the Virginia Springs straddled the continental divide, sprawling through the long valleys and over the equally long ridges of the Alleghenies. ...In the Thirties, the inner group, the fountains most strongly impregnated with minerals, heat, fashion and fame [were] the Warm, the Hot, the White Sulphur, the Sweet, the Salt Sulphur and the Red Sulphur. For the most part they were connected by good turnpike roads, and in order to make the circuit of the lot one had to cut back and forth across the mountains, up out of one valley and down into another, travelling in all about a hundred and seventy miles."

"...the Warm could be called a stop, the White Sulphur was the second on the Springs Tour. The belles and beaux naturally presumed that fashion had laid out this course, but fashion originally had nothing to do with it; the fashionables were merely following on in the path beaten down long since by the invalids. When the doctors and the chemical analysts got around to charting the cure on scientific lines, they readily came to the conclusion that the invalids had by happy accident stumbled on a design of Nature's.

'Nature herself had arranged the springs in order for their best action on the human system, and it was Nature's inscrutable purpose that the bowels of the ailing should have the White Sulphur purge first of all. These were the preparatory waters which so readjusted the component parts of the interior machinery, so sensitized and altered them ("altered" was the magic word) that the other Springs could then get in the specialized whacks with incredible efficiency. The doctors, perceiving this, sensibly fell in the Nature's plan."

"After the White there was no hard and fast rule; which Springs came next depended on many things and not the least of these was what the White Sulphur water had done to the working parts. The patient might now need the Sweet for the "tonic" which rehabilitated the over-purged, or he might need the Salt for its Glauber salt or its iodine. Dr. Horner, continuing his prescription, routed them first to the Salt, then on to the Red Sulphur, seventeen miles, then doubled them back through the Salt to the Sweet, recommending a week at each. By that time the animal economy, what was left of it, would be ready for the bathing at the Hot and the Warm, thermal springs which Nature had so conveniently placed near the main exit from the region, just when one had done enough drinking and stood in need of a little steaming.

"That was the tour that any invalid followed who wished to do a good job on himself. When it was all over he could have consumed six weeks and about twenty-six gallons of variegated mineral waters."

*West Virginia became a state following the Wheeling Conventions, breaking away from Virginia during the American Civil War. The new state was admitted to the Union on June 20, 1863, and was a key Civil War border state. West Virginia was the only state to form by seceding from a Confederate state.

~Julie