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Show Near the most generous flow he built a bathhouse of railroad ties with a 6x10 foot bathtub of planks. He walled up an outdoor pool on the west mound. Somebody carpentered the "House Built without a Saw." It made you think of a down-at-heels duke with shreds and patches on his top hat and tails. If a board stuck up a few inches or feet above the ridgepole or below the eaves' line, he left it to stick out. Somebody built the duplex shacks near the south end of that mound, presumably for expected patients of the resort. Somebody hauled in logs and erected huts on the east side. Somebody raised low dikes to impound a long pond for watering sheepherds in snowless periods of winter. By the time we homesteaders arrived, the foolhardy effort to turn the Springs into a watering place had been deserted. Probably it reached its height in the early 1880's & 90's when the Horn Silver and Pioche mines were booming but before the railroad forged south-westward below Milford. That was when the Springs were a station on the stage route. After the railroad came through the valley, no one traveled the Pioche Road. We found the Springs abandoned. We never knew the names of our benefactors who had left facilities for us to use. Without hurt to our consciences, we used the Springs. We organized picnics and other gatherings around the largest flows. On a table-smooth clay flat to the west a few of us young blades measured out a quarter-mile oval track for foot races. I recall a relay race for which we drafted everyone who could jog at all. It was a medley relay with the distances adjusted to age and sex and muscles, a dozen to a team. Whether Nada beat Thermo or vice versa, |