‘They didn’t know the name of Carlsbad, they just knew the Twin Inns and the chicken house.’

Kay Christiansen, just a few months shy of her 80th birthday, has run a thriving real estate business in Carlsbad for more than 40 years. But, familiar as she is with area property, she’s even better-versed in the town’s history and its ties to the old Bohemian city of Karlsbad, for which it was named. Christiansen and her husband built the Germanic Alt Karlsbad house on Carlsbad Boulevard, where she still lives. She delights in leading visitors down to the 108-year-old well in the cellar, which contains the mineral water that was pronounced identical to the water in the springs of old Karlsbad, and she revels in the history of the two towns. She was interviewed in her home by Times staff writer Leslie Wolf and photographed by Don Bartletti.

John Frazier, a sea captain, came up from San Diego in 1882. He knew there was water here because he had it divined, and he dug this well, which they say took him two years. He started to drink it, and he noticed his rheumatism wasn’t hurting him so much. Then a Frenchman came through and tasted the water and he said, “You know, that really has a familiar taste to it.” So they sent a sample up to Los Angeles to be tested, and it was exactly like the water of the old city of Karlsbad that we’re named for.

Word of the spring spread and brought two Midwesterners, Gerhardt Schutte and D. D. Wadsworth, who built identical Victorian homes which became known as the Twin Inns. In 1919, Schutte sold his to a restaurant man from Santa Monica. It became one of the biggest restaurants around. Years ago, there wasn’t any horse racing in California; it was all in Mexico, so people went down and, when they came back, they always went to the Twin Inns. They didn’t know the name of Carlsbad, they just knew the Twin Inns and the chicken house.

A beautiful old hotel which was built in 1886 burned down after only eight years, but they continued to bottle water from the spring and ship it all over the United States. The second hotel, which is now the Lutheran home across the street, was built in 1930. It was called the California Mineral Springs Hotel, and it had three or four fountains, all mineral water. Then, after the Depression, instead of leaving the well open they cemented it off. Of course now all of the old pipes have deteriorated, but we’ve had it witched and there is water still down there.

When we came here in 1926, there was a counter at the well and you could take a bucket and turn on the faucet and just fill it up. I came from Nebraska when I was in my junior year of high school, and I graduated from Oceanside High, which was one of the only two schools up here at the time. We moved here because of my father. He traveled all up and down the Pacific Coast, then came home to Columbus, Neb., and said, “We’re moving to Carlsbad, California.” Well, whoever heard of that? In those days, even people who lived in California had never heard of Carlsbad. Then he said we could have orange trees in the back yard, and we’d be near the ocean, so we decided to go along with him.

This is my house, the Alt Karlsbad house. My husband and I built it in 1964. You see, the people who came here had the European background and they knew the benefits of the mineral waters, and that’s why we did a German and Bohemian building.

The sand castle in the back yard was started last July, and is made with 200 tons of sand from the San Luis Rey river bottom. It is a replica of the old city of Karlsbad in Bohemia, which is now in Czechoslovakia and called Karlova-Vary. That city is as great a cultural center as it is a health spa. For centuries, all royalty went there to take the waters. We visited once in 1961 and we stayed at a wonderful old hotel which was celebrating its 600th year. Every place you go there, you see all the statues of all the musicians and the artists and all the greats of culture.