As a Destination, San Juan Hot Springs Has Cooled Off

The gurgling is the first signal that one has neared the elusive spot. Then the vibrations start, deep beneath the feet. Moments later when sulfur assaults the nostrils, you know exactly where you stand: at the ancient and storied San Juan Hot Springs.

Tucked away in a corner of Caspers Wilderness Park, inaccessible to all but schoolchildren on guided tours, scofflaws inclined to climb fences, and hikers willing to trek six miles from the park’s main entrance, is Orange County’s legendary natural spa.

There was a time, however, when dozens of people visited the hot springs every day.

For thousands of years, according to supervising park ranger John Gannaway, the hot springs -- which bubble up from three-quarters of a mile beneath Earth’s surface and arrive in six natural pools at a temperature of 121 degrees -- were a sacred site to the Juaneno Indians, who believed the waters to have medicinal powers.

About 1888, he said, European settlers came to the same conclusion, creating a commercial resort around the hot springs that lasted into the 1940s. The place featured an Olympic-size swimming pool, cabins, a small store, hot tubs and a dance hall known for loud gatherings, Gannaway says.

It’s unclear what prompted the resort to close.

One local legend has it that the resort’s owner vindictively dynamited the place to prevent the U.S. Navy from taking it over by eminent domain for use in rehabilitating injured soldiers during World War II.

Whatever the case, Gannaway said, the springs were ignored for many years, until young people rediscovered them in the 1960s. “People started coming out on their own to sit in the hot tubs,” the park ranger said.

In 1974 the county acquired the land as part of a purchase from a private developer. And in the early 1980s, Gannaway said, it was leased to an entrepreneur who reopened the site as a public spa.

Russ Kiessig was not available to comment on his San Juan venture. Two years ago, however, he discussed it in detail in an e-mail posted on a website devoted to the hot springs.

“When I arrived on the scene,” Kiessig wrote, “there were a few ruins including a pair of ancient end to end swimming pools, an old soaking pool and the small hot springs pools where ... water flowed out at about 50 gallons a minute.”

Over the next decade, Kiessig went on, he and his wife spent close to $1 million improving the site by, among other things, paving its entry road, building a parking area and a large reception building with restrooms, and adding 25 bathing sites, including 15 with redwood hot tubs. They also added showers and built a 98-by-40-foot swimming pool in the space left by the old demolished pools.

Once again, the hot springs, which were open 24 hours a day, became a popular stopping place for locals and tourists.

But not for long.

Gannaway will say only that the lessee eventually declared bankruptcy and abandoned the site.

In his posted e-mail, however, Kiessig goes into more detail. In the early 1990s, he writes, the California Department of Transportation embarked on a project to straighten Ortega Highway at a place near the hot springs where a difficult curve had contributed to at least two fatal accidents.

According to his account, the state “came in and destroyed our tree cover, did extensive construction for over a year and left us with roaring trucks and cars’ headlights and noise right in our face.”

Later, according to Gannaway, a brush fire destroyed much of what was left of the spa.

And today, he says, the place is open only to students, 3,000 to 5,000 of whom take organized tours annually of the geothermal site.

Gannaway says the county has no plans to reopen the hot springs commercially. “We’ve had such good success using it as an educational site for the schoolkids of Orange County that our goal is to keep it as natural as possible,” he says.

Indeed, nature has reclaimed much of the site. Overgrown by foliage and patrolled by an army of bees, the hot springs are not easy to find.

But then you feel the rumble of the water rushing underground, catch the strong whiff of the sulfur and, finally, see the streams of steam rising lazily from the hidden pools.

Some of them are encircled by primitive stone structures, the origins of which are unclear. There’s a large block tub, now overgrown with green crud. And you can see the ragged outline of the old pool, now packed with earthen debris.