Bill Lynch: Some like it ‘hot’

When naming ‘the Springs’ reached its boiling point.|

In the geographical shorthand used by locals for decades, “The Springs,” is the area along Highway 12 that includes the unincorporated communities of Agua Caliente, Fetters Hot Springs and Boyes Hot Springs. Some people throw in El Verano for good measure.

Boyes Hot Springs was originally the name of a resort, not a town. By the time I was a kid taking swimming lessons there, the resort was simply referred to as the “Bath House.”

Capt. H.E. Boyes gave birth to the resort in 1895 after workers he hired struck 112 degree water, high in sulphur and other minerals, at 70 feet. Eventually the resort he established was given the name Boyes Hot Springs Bath House. The community that grew up around it took the name of Boyes Springs. The word “Hot” was apparently added to the town name sometime in the 1930s.

One may ask, “Boyes Springs or Boyes Hot Springs, who cares?” In fact, most of the time in everyday speech locals use “Boyes Springs,” leaving out the word “Hot” when referring to the area in general.

But, some residents of that part of our community object to the omission and insist that the full and proper name is Boyes Hot Springs.

In the late 1940s, the Boyes Hot Springs Improvement Club was quite active in promoting the idea of its community.

The movement reached a peak of sorts with a Boyes Hot Springs Centennial Celebration in 1949. It was a grand three-day affair that included a street dance, folk dancing, barbecue and ball game.

The implication of this 100th birthday party was that the community had been founded in 1849, more than four decades before Capt. Boyes was on the scene.

How this 100th birthday was calculated is somewhat obscure. The entire Springs area was part of the “Agua Caliente Land Grant” from General Mariano Vallejo to Andrew Hoeppner in payment to him for giving his daughters piano lessons. That grant to Hoeppner happened in 1846.

Hoeppner sold some of the land, but kept a portion, on which he apparently discovered hot springs some months later.

He made the springs accessible to the paying public and touted their curative properties in ads in the Californian, an early newspaper published in Monterey and San Francisco. He called his resort Amenthal, and promoted it as a house of entertainment with bathing rooms located in Aqua Caliente about three miles north of Sonoma.

His first hot springs resort attempt might be the reason the Boyes Hot Springs Improvement Club chose 1949 as their year for a centennial celebration.

However, Hoeppner’s efforts were apparently not successful. The resort didn’t last long and Hoeppner sold the property. The hot springs were forgotten and not rediscovered until Capt. Boyes arrived and started digging.

It was the Captain who put Boyes (Hot) Springs on the map.

Today, the resort he established just north of Boyes Boulevard next to Sonoma Creek is long gone.

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