WarmSpringsOnline.com

The Warm Springs district is rich in history, although it's not always easy to find it. One of the goals of the WSBCA is to document and share the history of our neighborhood with the community. To achieve that goal, we encourage you to share your information, stories, old photographs, and links to web sites so we can all learn more about our community.

Please register as a user on the site, and submit an article and upload photos for publishing on the site. For more information on submitting articles, click on "Submitting an Article".

In trying to kick off this section, I found a geologic report on Mission Peak from the Missouri University of Science and Technology (J. David Rogers and Patrick L. Drumm) and they detail some of the early history of our district:

"According to Mission San Jose Mission, the warm springs along Agua Caliente Creek predate the Spanish occupation, as the friars were shown the springs by local Ohlone Indians around 1797, when the mission was founded.   The springs were part of the 9,564 acre Agua Caliente land grant given to Fulgencio Higuera in 1836 and 1839, during the Mexican period. The Warm Springs Hotel was established at the springs in 1853 by Clement Columbet.   According to one account by Josiah Stanford, the springs were said to issue forth up to 60,000 gallons per day of warm water (letter to Mrs. James Whipple of Niles in 1920, cited in History of Washington Township, 1965).    The immediate area was cultivated for grain beginning around 1846, which was shipped to San Francisco throughout the 1850s.  Beginning in 1870 the area was planted with grapes, which became the Stanford and Millard vineyards.   During the 1870s the springs were rumored to have become tepid and choked with minerals." (original web page here)

I know there are lots of folks in our area who have more personal accounts of our more recent history, it would be great to see those accounts documented here.