Throwback Thursday: Rediscovered Springs
Two Additional Springs Discovered Along the Northridge Trail Spark Curiosities
The Discovery
Back in June, our Facilities Manager, Kevin McCraw, discovered something curious while exploring the Northridge Trail. The Northridge trail is a hiking trail which winds along the large hill on the Historic Springs campus.
Through the overgrown plants that compose the areas off the trail, he noticed something odd.
It looked to be a concrete box in the woods.
Looking inside, Kevin encountered a metal door.
Upon opening it, he found what looked like an underground stone structure that looked very similar to the retaining pools for some of our earliest springs.
Nearby, he spotted what potentially appeared to be more walls and another odd stone structure.
What ARE these?
Our archivist came to help investigate after learning about the discoveries.
We know that from items washing out due to heavy storms (and some of the digs Kevin has done as part of maintenance) that there are a few artifacts in this area that suggested that it was used during the past.
However, these springs are inarguably much more substantial than a few old shards of teapots and porcelain (no matter how intriguing those are in their own right) and indicate more habitual use.
Our archivist was able to estimate, based on comparing the masonry techniques and her previous experience with archaeological digs at places like the Brandywine Battlefield, that these structures were likely built during the colonial period.
However, they have definitely been modified after that period.
The distinct arch shape of one spring and ‘keystone’ shape of the other are intriguing anomalies. The two springs do not have the same style of masonry, though the technique used to build them make them match (roughly) in period.
One (the spring that is walled off) also potentially appears to have once contained a reservoir that is larger than the other one, though the second seems to potentially have been a deeper well.
Interestingly, the wall that we see plugging up one of the springs was made with stone and concrete– a method that became more popular in the late 1880s and 1890s and continued through the 1920s.
Additionally, the metal door that we found on the first “concrete block” also suggests a time period of around that time.
While in the future we would like to either remove the wall from the walled-off spring or send a small camera through the rocks to inspect the interior, we have not been able to do that yet. That being said, these springs in the woods have remained an intriguing mystery around campus for a few months.
We had plans to investigate them further during the colder months, but for the time being, they’d remained a curious enigma.
We do have some evidence that suggests that there was likely activity in that area, though.
Precedent and the North Ridge Trail
From previous aerial pictures of the property, we know that the hill where the Northridge Trail currently lies was once clear-cut as late as the 1970s.
The trees that now grow there form a mostly second-growth forest, featuring a good amount of invasive species (such as the Tree of Heaven— a host plant for the invasive lanternflies).
Because of the aggressive growth of these sorts of plants, traversing the hill off of the trail during the summer months tends to be rather difficult due to the dense foliage.
Please Note: While the trail itself offers a hike that is quite lovely and our campus is open to the public for self-guided adventures, visitors to the campus are NOT permitted to go off trail due to the overgrowth and uneven terrain and the inherit potential dangers caused by doing so.
The Northridge trail winds up the hill that was previously not forested, but even in older photos (such as the one above) we do not see any obvious indication of where these specific springs may have been.
However, older depictions of the campus, such as a map from a mid-1800s advertisement by hotel owner James Bones, strongly suggest that buildings once stood up there as well. The most prominent of those is sometimes identified in early property records as the ‘summer house’.
We can also see on the aerial photograph (shown above) that there appear to be areas where the grass cover is inconsistent, which could be indicative of where buildings potentially once were.
Once a building has been removed, the vegetation in the area will typically reclaim it, which makes it difficult to see where the building once was from the ground level. However, from high vantage points, we can sometimes see the ‘ghost’ outline of where the building once was because of the different ways the vegetation can grow.
This is usually due to different ways the soil under where the building once was has been contaminated or otherwise changed by the habitation period, or through a number of other factors.
This is not always a foul-proof way to identify where there might have been buildings in the past, but it adds to our suspicions.
As we can see, there are several anomalies in the grass coverage on the hill when was clear-cut. Though extremely tentative, this adds a bit more credibility to our hypothesis as well.
Springs, Springs, Springs
Earlier mentions in the property records also identify it as a seven-spring property, though in modern times, Historic Yellow Springs officially recognizes only the three springs associated with the Spring Houses: The Jenny Lind Spring (also known as the sulfur spring), the Crystal Diamond Spring (also known as the magnesium spring), and the Iron Spring, whose yellow water gives Historic Yellow Springs its name.
The potential of there being two additional springs, located up on the hill by where we think the ‘summer house’ once stood– if it ever existed at all– brings us just a bit closer to supporting that initial claim.
For a while, though, this is where the matter was put to rest.
Then, this week, while updating our archives to maintain them in a complete and digital form, our archivist discovered a research paper written in 1939 that provides us with another thread to follow.
Higham’s Paper
This paper, written during the PAFA period, contains a retrospective of all that was known about our campus’s history during that time. It was authored by one C. Barton Higham, then a student at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster.
The paper (as many articles written about Yellow Springs in general are want to do) first discusses how pleasing the countryside is, and touches on the bountiful natural beauty of our setting. Higham then discusses the distinct varieties of water found on the campus, and identifies there being four of them.
Though the paper contains a few factual errors- such as incorrectly identifying Yellow Springs as Bristol Springs (a separate town many miles away) that was also mentioned in Watson’s Annals of Phoenixville– it also features a good number of points about or history that we know to be factual.
This makes this paper a somewhat dubious source, though it is relevant enough for our purposes to warrant further digging.
On page two of his paper, Higham makes an incredibly intriguing mention of two ‘lime water’ springs used by the Revolutionary War Hospital. He notes that these two springs have since become “completely encased in masonry”.
Intriguingly, Higham also makes several mentions of “the old building”, but we know this is likely not the hospital itself because of the distance between those two points.
This suggests that there may have been a separate “old building”, different than the hospital itself, that may have once been in front of our two mystery springs.
The time period during which this paper was written aligns with the techniques used to wall off the springs we found on the hill. This piece of information gives us a bit more clarity about the fact that these springs were known of in the past, though we still don’t know enough to confirm the identify of the mystery springs on the hill.
We also don’t currently know why they were walled off and sealed up to begin with.
We are currently doing additional research into our archives and the sources Higham uses to verify these claims.
Revolutionary War Medicine?
That being said– what we have already uncovered is incredibly intriguing.
Kevin has noted that he found pipes while digging on the property, which may have allowed water to flow down from the hill into the hospital area. This water could have served to help heal the sick, provide drinking water, and fulfill a number of other therapeutic uses.
If the springs genuinely served as drinking water (or even as a form of early hydrotherapy at the Hospital) during the Revolutionary War, then this find significantly enhances our understanding of the kind of medicine practiced there.
Additionally, if we confirm that these springs are indeed the same ones that Higham mentions in his paper, we may be able to pinpoint exactly when and why they were walled off.
Healing Water
We know from our recorded history that, prior to the Revolution, Yellow Springs functioned as a spa.
The town later gained fame and renown as both a fashionable destination and a healing spa, with genuine efforts in hydrotherapy undertaken by practitioners such as Dr. Lingen.
However, we also know that although the reputation of the pre-Revolution spa was a bit more ‘rough around the edges’ (especially when compared to the polished, genteel resort town that Yellow Springs would become) records mentioned the medicinal aspects of the water springs as early as 1722.
We can surmise that the medicinal properties of the springs were known about and used likely even earlier, considering our knowledge of the indigenous people in the area– and the fact that we know that the “house of entertainment” petitioned by Richard Pritchard was up and running from around 1722-1750.
This suggests that the pre-Revolution spa might have been in effect at an earlier date, which would have allowed businessmen and inn-keepers, such as Pritchard, to have seen the venture as financially viable.
What this means for the soldiers treated at the hospital, who may have used the water themselves, still remains a matter of speculation.
Nonetheless, the rediscovery of these springs ignites an intriguing mystery and offers us a glimpse into many more captivating anecdotes from our past that we can uncover when we venture off the beaten path— sometimes literally.
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Learn more about the history of Yellow Springs
You can read the more in-depth version of this post here
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