Today we walked in historical places. Hot springs seem to be the natural crossroads for many cultures. Gilroy has a hot springs a short drive out of downtown Gilroy. Today we loaded the whole family, ours and our sons, and drove out to meet the California State Park Ranger, Camron Bowers and volunteer Teddy Goodrich in the hills about ten miles north east of downtown Gilroy. There were perhaps twenty people on our somewhat exclusive tour of the historic Gilroy Hot Springs. The first non natives visited the springs in 1860 and the family of George Roop homesteaded the area in 1871. By 1880 a resort had been built around the natural hot sulfurous springs and a twice daily stage ran to the railroad in Gilroy. Wealthy people from San Francisco came to the resort for holidays and the healing properties of the water. Most of the buildings that we visited date from the 1920’s. The Hotel and Club house built in the 1870’s was demolished by fire in 1980.
The resort was plagued by bankruptcy in the great depression and was purchased by one H. K. Sakata in 1939 and renamed the Gilroy Yamato Hot Springs and catered to Japanese immigrants until 1941. These people were all swept up in the WWII interment episode and did not return until 1946. Improvements were made and the hot springs thrived for a time. Eventually the whole resort operation collapsed over a need to modernize all of the cabins and bring them up to modern code. All that is left now is deteriorating cabins and bath houses that date from the 1920’s.
Perhaps the most interesting story is how our family managed to get included in this tour. We were Geocaching in the vicinity of the hot springs about a week ago. Glen had heard about the hot springs and managed to find a reference to them on the internet. When we approached the end of the road we met Ranger Bowers leaving the closed section of the California State Park that now owns and manages the property. We asked about touring the property and he left his card and instructions to e-mail requesting a tour. Glen did that and today we were invited to join this tour.
The park property may someday be developed and open to the public, but for now we were privileged to get a very special private tour.
Check the bottom of page, you will see some of the photos of our visit.
This completes our visit to Gilroy, the garlic capitol of California, and tomorrow we will begin pushing northward. It will take a couple weeks, but we will be looking up all of our old friends in Oregon soon.
Bye for now and lots of love from Gary and Judy.
