April 15, 2025 • 31 mins
VisitMineralWells.com
Tucked away in the heart of Texas lies Mineral Wells, a town whose identity was forever shaped by a peculiar discovery in 1877. When Judge Alvis Lynch and his wife settled in this then-barren land, they struck something more valuable than gold – mineral-rich water with seemingly miraculous healing properties.
With Rose Jordan as our expert guide, we journey through time to uncover how this unassuming place transformed into "America's Great Health Resort" where people would flock to "drink their way to health." The story behind the famous "Crazy Water" name proves particularly fascinating – originating from a local woman whose mental health noticeably improved after regularly drinking from the town's third well. What was once dismissed as superstition is now understood through the lens of modern science as potentially addressing severe mineral deficiencies affecting brain chemistry.
The architectural treasures of Mineral Wells tell their own compelling stories. With over 100 historic buildings preserved in its nationally registered historic district, the town stands as a testament to resilience and preservation. We explore the magnificent Baker Hotel, constructed in 1929 just after the stock market crash, which hosted celebrities like Judy Garland and The Three Stooges before closing its doors in 1972. After sitting vacant for decades, this architectural marvel is now undergoing a painstaking restoration that symbolizes the town's rebirth – a project locals jokingly said would happen "when pigs fly."
The story of Mineral Wells is ultimately one of reinvention and hope. From its decline following FDA restrictions and the closure of Fort Walters military base to its recent designation as the "Wellness Capital of Texas," the community demonstrates how honoring heritage while embracing modern wellness can breathe new life into a historic destination. Join us as we discover how this remarkable town is reclaiming its identity through water, wellness, and a community that refused to give up on their flying pigs.
Also mentioned on this episode: Episodes 211, 212, & 224
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, I'm Alexa and I'm Rory, and together we are the
Romies.
We are married To each other.
Right, we are a touring musicalduo.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
And our music has taken us to all kinds of places
all around the world and keepsus always on the go.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
So we hope you enjoy our stories and adventures while
running around working to keepall your plates spinning.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
And we hope, to facilitate your busy lifestyle
and feed your inner travel bug.
Hi everyone, welcome to theRomy's Podcast.
I'm Alexa.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
And I'm Rory.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
We are excited to continue sharing our Mineral
Wells series with you.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Yes, we are.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Mineral Wells is just about two and a half hours from
us here in Waco, texas, and youcan take some back roads to get
there or go through Fort Worthon your way.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
We took the back roads.
It was nice.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
So, however you like to road trip, we definitely
encourage you to take the roadtrip to Mineral Wells.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Deaf.
Now they can ship you theirmagic water if you end up flying
.
But if you road trip, you cantake home those five gallon
barrels of the stuff, just likewe did, yes, of the good stuff.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Now, if you're not sure what we're talking about,
check out our previous episodeto hear all about the famous
crazy water that put this townon the map.
Now, in today's episode, we'regoing to deep dive into this
town's history with the help ofour tour guide, Rose Jordan.
Awesome, yes, she's beenworking with the Mineral Wells
Tourism Bureau.
She loves the town.
She knows its stories insideand out, so there's no better
(01:31):
guide than Rose to share MineralWells' rich history with us.
We started a walking tour withher and began at a very
unassuming well.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Indeed.
Here's Rose, here's Rose at avery unassuming.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
Well Indeed.
Here's Rose.
Here's Rose.
The Lynch family Judge AlvisLynch and his wife lived in
Denison and they were movingwest looking for a place to stay
and they decided to makeMineral Wells their home, and
they Was there a town here atthe?
time there wasn't.
There was nothing here.
No wells, no anything, justcountry.
And so, for whatever reason,they picked Mineral Wells.
And so what do you do when youfind a new home?
You've got to find water.
And so they hired somebody todrill a well and in exchange
(02:11):
their payment was three oxen.
The original well is actuallyback over in another section,
but they started it.
When they first started drinkingthat water, it smelled funny,
it tastes a little funny, sothey decided to test it on their
cattle.
Cattle were drinking it.
Nothing happened to like okay,we should, should be good.
So they started drinking it andthey both had some different
(02:33):
kinds of ailments rheumatism ordigestive issues or whatever and
they noticed that as they weredrinking the water those
ailments were going away and soobviously worried about
something like that's going toget out really fast.
And people just startedflocking to mineral wells for
the water.
And so this particular wellwe're standing on the northwest
(02:54):
corner of the Crazy Water Hotelthis particular well was the
third well to be dug.
What's really cool is I finallyfound the first written
documentation about this storyjust a few weeks ago.
Up till now it's just beenlegend, but I found a firsthand
account of this story and it wasone of the kids, one of the
(03:15):
school kids.
So there was a woman in townwho everybody thought was crazy
and she was hanging out by this.
Well, this was the third wellto be dug.
It was then called the Wiggins.
Well, and over a period of time, she was drinking the water and
she became less crazy.
What we think is she probablyhad something like, um, dementia
, maybe some Alzheimer's.
But also, to you know, when youknow about the chemical, the
(03:38):
chemistry of your brain, youknow if you're really really off
on things like magnesium orcalcium, your brain does funny
things to you.
In whatever case, it was, thewater was making her feel better
and less crazy.
So the school kids around towncalled her the crazy woman.
So this became the crazywoman's well.
It was later shortened to crazywater or crazy well, and so
(04:01):
that's how we have the crazywater hotel.
And as you walk around town yousee crazy, crazy everything,
because this was here beforethis.
Yes, all.
So this was in like 1877 orjust a little bit before this
hotel was actually.
This is actually the secondcrazy water hotel.
The first crazy water hotel, Ithink, was a block or two away
from this, but it burnt down.
It was built in 1912 and burntdown in a huge fire in town.
(04:24):
This one was built in 1925.
And then the Baker Hotel wasbuilt in 1929.
So this one is not only first,but it's the one that carries
our story Crazy Water.
So every time you see crazyaround town, it all started
right here with a woman who'sdrinking this well, drinking
water from this well.
That everybody thought wascrazy and became better.
(04:45):
1877 is the year our city wasfounded, and so that picture you
just took the man on a donkeythat is the most iconic photo
that we have of judge AlvisLynch, and people will say that
you know they thought it was aman on a donkey drinking a
bottle of hooch.
He's not carrying a bottle ofhooch, he's carrying our water.
So that's what all that was.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
That's awesome and for those of you who are
listening, obviously you don'thave video, and so we're
standing like when I think thatI'm going to go to a, well, I'm
thinking like an old school,well, like you can drop your
pail in and grab something.
I mean, we're basically at likea manhole.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
It's a really dingy yellow square manhole.
So it's a square and a hole wehave a square we have a plan to
um replace get the well workingagain, number one, okay and then
replace this metal grate with aplate glass so that you can see
it down in there and see itworking, and then put a historic
sign up here explaining what itis Right.
(05:47):
Yeah, so cool.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Yep, yep, so when y'all come and visit, that might
already be up.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
So back in the day we would have people come in town,
and so we know this from oldpostcards.
We've got several old historicpostcards of Mineral Wells and
on the back people would writeI'm going to mineral wells for a
season, and a season usuallymeant months, a couple of months
, two months, three months, totake the waters, and by take the
(06:14):
waters they meant drinking itor it could have been bathing in
it.
And so we actually have seenold prescription pads where the
doctor has written, oldprescription pads where the
doctor has written take numbertwo this many times a day for
this long, take number threethis many times a day for this
long.
And so they actually literallywere prescribing our mineral
water to deal with whatever yourailments were.
(06:36):
And so you can't see it rightnow because the famous is under
it's under renovation, butthere's a sign in there from way
back when that talks about allthe different ailments that they
believe to help with digestiveissues, rheumatoid arthritis,
migraines, just all thosedifferent kinds of things.
And so back in the 60s and 70ssome things changed that made it
(06:56):
so that we can't make theclaims about our water, but it
was also the turnaround of theoriginal part of our decline for
mineral wells.
So about that time the FDAnumber one said that we can't
make those claims about ourwater anymore.
Around that same time peoplediscovered it was easier to take
an aspirin to deal with thesymptoms than it is to actually
root out and find out what'scausing your ailments and then
(07:18):
deal with that and actually cureyour body Right and actually
cure your body.
At the same time then ourmilitary base was decommissioned
and shut down.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
So you guys had a military base here.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
Massive.
It was Fort Walters.
It was massive, and so if you,basically if you flew a
helicopter in the Vietnam War,99 percent of them were trained
right here in Mineral Wells atFort Walters, and so our base
was huge.
We had helipads, differentplaces across the county.
Yeah, so when you kind ofcombine all those things, not
only did a massive chunk of ourpopulation disappear when the
(07:51):
base shut down, but also ourtourism the main thing that
people were coming for, ourwater suddenly now become less
important, less significantbecause it was easier to just
take an aspirin.
So, yeah, but back in the way,way back days, back in the early
1900s.
One of the things that we seenow is photos, oh, black and
white photos of people on thedonkey trails and so that's
(08:14):
actually that mountain rightthere and where, pretty much
today, if you go to a place andyou don't take a picture and put
it on instagram, were youreally there?
Well, in those days, if youcame Mineral Wells and you
didn't go up on the donkey trailand get your picture taken at
one of the cabins, like, wereyou really ever, ever, in
Mineral Wells?
That's like that's kind of theold, old story.
Instagram is seeing those.
(08:35):
Yeah.
So we have a lot of people thatwe we would love to have the
donkey trails back, butliabilities and all the things
that's not happening.
So yeah, yeah, there was athousand step stairway going up
the side of the mountain and itwas called the fat man's reducer
.
So we've got a historicpostcard of that.
So yeah, yeah, yeah, reduce youall the way, yeah.
And then I don't know if youguys saw the welcome sign when,
(08:56):
when we were coming into town upon the hill, reminds you of the
Hollywood sign.
So it's two mountains over, butit actually was.
Ours was before the Hollywoodsign.
And the man, mr Griffith, whowent back to Hollywood and built
the Hollywood sign we have aphotograph of him up on the
rooftop of this hotel looking atthat sign before the Hollywood
(09:17):
sign was built.
So legend has it that he gotthe idea from here.
Whether or not that's true wedon't have it on paper, but if
you look at the time frames andyou look that he was here, that
works.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
Now, when you walk around downtown you see a lot of
historic buildings, and Rosehas some historic insight on
those as well.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
Go Rose.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
Submineral Wells has over 100 historic buildings in
our downtown.
We are a nationally registeredhistoric district.
Back in the 50s and 60s thetowns that had money actually a
lot of them took their historicbuildings down and just rebuilt
all new stuff.
So one of the blessings of nothaving had a lot of money in the
50s and 60s is that now we havesomething really special.
(09:58):
We have a hundred more than ahundred historic buildings here
in our downtown.
So we wouldn't have had that, Ithink, if we'd had money.
So that's been really great.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
Another thing that led us walking and driving
around Mineral Wells downtownare the murals.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
Now we've talked about murals in our episode
about Somerset in the LakeCumberland area, which is
episode 212.
And you can also take a muraltour in Lancaster, California,
episode 211.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
And there was a mural tour trail thing in Port
Angeles as well.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
Yes, there was, yeah, Okay so it's a.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
Thing.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
It's a thing, but Mineral Wells has its own unique
take on the stories behindtheir murals and.
Rose tells us a little bitabout that.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
And interactive as well.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
So one of the things that we started doing when we
started kind of reviving ourtown back is some of the
buildings that were ugly lookingbut didn't still have their
historic value.
So if it was brick that hadnever been painted on, we didn't
touch that.
If it was a facade that hadnever been touched, we didn't
paint over it.
But some of the buildings hadalready been painted over and
(11:02):
they were ugly, had already beenpainted over and they were ugly
, and so what we started doingwas bringing in muralists to put
murals in our downtown so thatwhile they were waiting for
their renovations, then we hadsomething pretty to look at.
And we actually have two thatare interactive murals, and this
one is the Goodnight Lovingmural and it's interactive
because if you're standing inthe right place of the parking
lot, that mountain actuallylines up to that mountain, so it
(11:25):
looks like the Cowboys arecoming down out of the mountain
and that cowboy that's theregetting water with his horse it
was actually our councilmanDoyle light, and so the muralist
painted him.
The other interactive one is afew blocks down and it has it's
a cocapella mural, but it has apart of the Baker Hotel and the
bell tower is chopped off of it,so that if you're standing in
(11:46):
the right place in the parkinglot, the bell tower of the mural
is finished out with the actualbell tower of the Baker Hotel.
So those are really cool.
That's cool.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Now Mineral Wells has two significant and historic
hotels.
Rose tells us about those next.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
They're really cool.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
So the Baker Hotel is the other historic hotel and
it's not ready yet.
It was originally built in 1929and opened right after the
stock market crash, and evenstill she thrived because people
were still coming for thewaters.
So the Baker Hotel we've gotstories of, like the Three
Stooges were there or Lyndon BJohnson has been there, and so a
(12:25):
lot of famous people went tothat hotel.
Well, actually, this one too,the crazy water hotel, and that
we're in right now so in thecrazy water hotel up on the
seventh floor there's a ballroomand it was.
Do you know who mary martin isthe original peter pan okay okay
.
So she had a dance studio upthere and the way that she paid
for it was she performed forpeople down here.
(12:46):
And then also at one time therewas the crazy radio gang.
A radio show came out of this.
But over at the Baker Hotel wehad lots of famous people over
there.
So in 1972, it closed its doorsfor the last time.
We told the story a while agoabout kind of the decline of
Mineral Wells.
The FDA said we couldn't makethose claims.
People were taking aspirin.
The military closed up and left.
(13:08):
So the Baker Hotel in 1972closed her doors for the last
time.
And so she has sat looming overour city for 50 plus years,
just empty, and until 2019, mostof the windows were beat out,
Like it was just she was justthis big shadow over the town.
And in June of 2019, theannouncement was made this this
(13:29):
finance group had come togetherto purchase the hotel.
So up to that point between 72and 2019, different people have
tried to take over the Baker andrenovate.
But one of the things that wasdifferent about this time in
2019 was that this groupactually purchased the hotel.
All those other times it stayedunder the ownership of the
things that was different aboutthis time in 2019 was that this
group actually purchased thehotel.
All those other times it stayedunder the ownership of the Horn
(13:50):
family and so people would try,and when they couldn't make it,
you could failed.
The Horn family still owned it.
And so in 2019, this finance,this group of investors, came
together and actually purchasedthe hotel, and so it was a big
media day in June of 2019.
From the steps of the BakerHotel.
We saw the finance, all of theinvestors there.
(14:13):
We have signed, we havepurchased the hotel.
Construction begins immediately.
So the construction fence wentup and things happened.
Well, even then, for years,people would say, well, when the
Baker Hotel comes back, it'llsave our town.
Okay, so then 2019 happens, theBaker has been purchased,
construction is to beginimmediately, but still people
said, yeah, that'll happen whenpigs fly.
(14:35):
Now, not all of us.
There was a group of naysayersthat said it'll happen when pigs
fly, but there are a lot of usthat believe it's happening.
Now here we are, five, sixyears later.
We still believe.
It just got derailed, slowedway down by COVID Supply chain,
people being able to work.
You know, hospitality financingstopped.
They weren't putting anythinginto hospitality, so COVID just
(14:57):
really slowed the whole projectdown.
But that summer 2019, we have agroup here called Leadership
Mineral Wells.
It's a different group thatgoes through every year.
It's adults in different partsof the community and so they
just go.
They spend nine months learningabout our community and then
they always have a class project.
But class 23 were the ones thatput the crazy sign up, the red
(15:18):
and green crazy sign.
So that's a historic.
That's a replica of theoriginal and the original was
more ceramic.
That was one of their projectswas to put that up prior to that
um in 2018.
I don't remember what the classnumber was, but they put um.
So if you're at the baker hotel, you'll see these blue signs
covering a lot of the windowsand doorways and some of them
(15:39):
have been taken down sinceconstruction started.
But it was a historic walkingtour.
You could walk around the bakerhotel and if you read the signs
, it gave you a history aboutour town and it talked about our
attractions and those kinds ofthings.
Well, in 2019, that class wasclass 25 and their project was
to restore the historic welcomesign up on the mountain.
(16:02):
It was in bad, bad shape.
It was rusted through, itwasn't lit anymore.
It was in terrible shape.
So, to do that, the Hollywoodright right.
So this connects back to theHollywood story.
So, but that costs manythousands of dollars to do.
It just so happened that thatparticular class was phenomenal
at fundraising and they just hadthis synergy.
That was great.
Well, one of the things thatthey did for their fundraiser is
(16:25):
you remember the big pig thatwe saw at the Coffee and
Cocktails?
Okay, this was at the same time, so our downtown renovation
started in 2018.
October 2018 was when thatstore opened, and so shortly
later, they put that patio inthe back and they put a stage
out there, and so we had ourfirst live music in downtown
there at Coffee and Cocktails.
So, for their fundraiser andactually Brandon was part of
(16:47):
that class they bought that pigand they put it up on the stage
behind where the bands performed, and for $5, you could sign
that pig, and if you signed it,you were one of the believers
saying we believe it's going tohappen.
It was also a little bit of asnub to the naysayers saying
it's going to happen, and sothat's the fly and pick story,
so that we do still believe theBaker hotel is going to happen.
(17:08):
But the other thing to the otherpiece to that story is that,
yes, we believe the Baker'sgoing to be a big deal when she
gets here, but as a community,we stopped waiting and we
decided, okay, we have to dosomething, cause if you had
driven through this town eight,six, eight years ago, you'd have
just kept on driving through towherever you were going.
There was nothing here in thedowntown, not a reason to stop.
(17:29):
We didn't have shops, we didn'thave restaurants down here.
I mean, there just wasn'tanything here, a lot of boarded
up, closed up shops.
So, as a community, in 2016, wedecided, well, if the baker
comes, that's great, but we'renot waiting.
So we're going to go and figureout what we want to be and
start this renovation and takeour you know, get our town
(17:49):
moving again, so that if thebaker comes, we'll be ready for.
Because, truthfully, back then,if the baker had been finished
and you had come to stay thenight in the baker with our town
the way it was, you'd have beenokay.
Now what?
You'd have gone in the baker,you'd have come back out.
You're like the baker's great,but what do I do now?
So now we have something forpeople to actually want to do.
(18:11):
Now people are coming evenwithout the baker ready, so just
imagine what it's going to belike when the baker gets here.
But when you see the murals ofthe flying pigs, when you see
the pig, if you come to myoffice, it's full of flying pigs
, people even.
It's full of flying pigs,people even.
Because I share this story.
All the time bus groups come inI'll hop on be their tour guide
(18:32):
.
I share the story.
You know, I've done it forhistoric tours and stuff, and so
people are leaving me flyingpigs all the time.
When you see flying pigs inMerrill Wells, it actually means
something to us.
It's not just a fun yardornament, we actually believe
we're seeing our people aredoing the impossible things here
.
So that's the flying pig storyand the Baker Hotel story too.
(18:52):
Yeah, so the Baker Hotel, it isa historic preservation project.
It's the biggest historicpreservation of a hotel.
I can't remember if it's in thestate of Texas or in the
country, but it is a.
It's a huge, huge deal, and sobecause of that, big chunks of
the funding are historic grants,historic, you know those kinds
of things historic credits, andso they have to keep it as true
as they can, and so back thenthe rooms were small.
(19:14):
Some of the things that werenotable about the Baker Hotel
when it got here was that it wasthe first one to have this
great, big, huge pool here inTexas.
It also was an early adopter tothis technology of as soon as
you open the door to your room,the lights and the air
conditioning would come on.
So at the baker hotel, she'sgot she.
(19:35):
There are so many stories aboutthe baker hotel that she just
like in fact where she sits nowis not where they originally
started building it.
Where the baker hotel pool isis where they started building
that.
And then mr baker went to um, Ithink it was a place in
california and he saw this bigpool and he's like we have to
have that at the baker.
So they stopped construction onthat, move the baker over and
(19:57):
put the pool in the footings.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
They made the pool right.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
So and then I mean we have pictures they had already
started the construction on thehotel.
So yeah, it was really cool.
But because it's a historicpreservation project, they have
to try to keep things true andthat's kind of part of what
slowed it down.
So not only with COVID didhospitality funding stop because
nobody was going to loan forhospitality, but the other piece
(20:21):
too is that if you think aboutit's a historic project, so if
you need a sink in your room,well, you need 167 out of 147.
It's going to be 147 rooms,well, they can't just be any
sink, it's got to be somethingthat's going to fit the time
period, those kinds of things,right.
So then think about supplychain and how that came to a
(20:41):
halt with COVID.
So you've got hospitalityfunding is a problem, supply
chain is now a problem.
So that's been a lot of theslowdown of it.
On several of the floors wherethere were two rooms, they will
become one because they were sosmall.
Because of the historic natureof the project, I think they've
just is it one whole floor thatthey're keeping original?
But in those floors wherethey've made two rooms one,
(21:01):
they've still kept the original.
So the hallway still has to bethe same.
So they kept the door for bothrooms, but only one of them is
usable.
There's one more piece of thefunding that they need to kick
it back in gear.
So they never fully stopped,but they've had to go really
slow.
Right, when they get this lastpiece in they'll kick it in full
gear.
But some of the things that theydid.
(21:21):
So there are 997 windows on theBaker Hotel.
They couldn't be, and most ofthem were shot out not shot out,
but most of them were broken.
Well, they couldn't just bereplaced, they have to be
restored.
997 windows came out, had to belabeled, came out, restored by
a craftsman and put back in.
(21:42):
Yes, so like the roof.
So the next thing was the roof.
Well, that roof was importedfrom Italy.
So it's like kind of a big deal, but that I mean, I don't think
they had to import it this time, but it's that terracotta roof.
So they had to replace the roofand because they had to dry it
in, because a lot of the damagewas, you know, rain leakage and
bats, um, so yeah, so those beena few things, but.
(22:05):
But then our general contractor,mark Rawlings, is this
phenomenal like.
I don't know how this manthinks.
But there's a room in theground floor of the hotel that
has all the artifacts, and soall the light fixtures came out,
but they've been labeled, so weknow where they go back to.
All the doors from all therooms came down and they're all
(22:25):
labeled, so you know exactlywhere they go back to.
All the doors from all therooms came down and they're all
labeled, so you know exactlywhere they go back to.
And so, like they've even gotan old butler's door there so
that you know back in the day ifyou wanted to leave laundry for
them to do, you would put it inthis fixture in the door and
they would pick it up on theother side.
So we still have some of thoseold doors.
So, yeah, it's a really cool tosee.
I can't remember what he callsthe room, but it's phenomenal.
(22:47):
And then the other artifactsthat they have found throughout
the hotel that they're not goingto reuse will later become part
of a museum there at the hotel,but they're all down in a room.
It's really cool, yeah.
Yeah, it had restaurants in it,it had a bowling alley in it,
it had a gymnasium in it, it hadmineral spas in it.
(23:10):
It was where all the famouspeople came yeah I mean back in
that time, you'll see, you'llsee places in old newspapers
where people wrote stuff aboutus, or you'll see in old
advertising postcards that therewere two things that they used
to call us america's greathealth resort and where, where
America drinks its way to health, everybody was coming here for
the water.
Yeah, yeah.
So our historic post office isover by the Baker and we've got
(23:33):
a picture of Judy Garland in thehistoric post office.
They were doing a big.
Was it a fundraiser?
Remember what that was?
The big stamp thing and so we'vegot a historic picture of Judy
Garland over there at the postoffice.
Yeah, it's really cool Likeeverybody came here, and so
we've got a historic picture ofJudy Garland over there at the
post office.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
Yeah it's really cool , like everybody came here.
And finally, we have the CrazyWater Hotel, which is where
you're going to find the crazycoffee and water bar we told you
about in our previous episode,so check that one out if you
haven't heard it yet.
There are also some other funshops inside the hotel and even
a salon, which is actually whereRory made his very first stop
when we arrived at Mineral Wells.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
That's true.
I walked immediately into thesalon there in the Crazy Water
Hotel and they had someoneavailable.
Yes, so you got to.
You know, stay looking sharpfor podcasting, even if you
can't see me, Right.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
You can watch them in your heart.
Maybe we'll post this onYouTube one day.
All right, so Rose even has astory or two about the Crazy
Water Hotel, so here she goes.
Speaker 3 (24:32):
So the Crazy Water Hotel is actually?
It's a public benefitcorporation, so it's not owned
by one person.
It actually has 88 localinvestors.
The primary investor on thisproject is also a primary
investor on the Baker Hotel, butthat one will be a little bit
different.
But this one is a publicbenefit corporation project.
So what that means is that theycan.
(24:53):
It means a lot of things, butwhat it means for our community
is that while they can keep aneye on profit with it being a
public benefit corporation, theykeep more eye on what's best
for the community.
So they will make choices herethat if you were looking for
profit first, it would be onething, but they don't do that
here.
When they're doing things here,they're thinking about the best
(25:15):
benefit for our community.
So yeah, and so we also live inan opportunity zone, and so I
think both of them sit insidethat opportunity zone.
So in here, the water bar wasoriginally a pavilion.
You see signs in there that sayCrazy Water Pavilion.
Also, where you got your waterbottled, that was a pavilion.
(25:35):
So back in the day we hadpavilions all over town and each
pavilion had its own specialty.
So where today you would bellyup to the bar and drink your
beer back in those days yes, sir, that's where you check it when
today you would belly up to thebar and drink beer.
Well, in those days you wouldbelly up to the bar, to one of
(25:57):
the pavilion bars, and drink thewater, and it was pricey, but
each pavilion had a specialty.
So it might be dancing, or itmight be shuffleboard, or it
might be card games or dominoes,and so you just hang out at the
pavilions, drink your water anddo whatever entertainment thing
you had.
Yeah, we saw the advertising ofa heater outhouse, and outhouses
were in need when peoplestarted drinking the water one
of my most favorite advertisingpostcard and they're all
(26:19):
cartoonish, but they all showsome version of a person
drinking water, drinking crazywater and running to the
outhouse.
It's really that number fourwater that they're depicting
because it cleans you out.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
So yeah, so good.
Yeah, and if you're busydrinking the good stuff, then
you're not spending your timedrinking harmful stuff.
That's true, just saying.
Speaker 3 (26:39):
Yeah, we were really looking at going down the Blue
Zone route.
When you're marketing adestination, you really have to
figure out what's the one thingthat sets you apart that will
make it worth people coming toyou.
For At that time, what we weremarketing for was outdoor
adventure.
But if you think about whereMineral Wells is and you drive
30 minutes or an hour away fromhere, like everybody around us
(27:00):
has some form of outdooradventure, outdoor adventure is
not enough to set us apart.
What does set us apart is ourwater.
But also a tourist generallyisn't coming for water unless
you start talking about wellness, because I mean you can get,
you can go to 7-Eleven anywhereand grab a bottle of water
unless there's something specialabout the water.
So it was about that time thatI started thinking okay, in this
(27:21):
next coming year, how am Igoing to market us as a
destination?
And very sheepishly, I startedthinking.
I knew the renovation that hadstarted and I knew some things
that we had coming, and I knew alot of it involved wellness in
our water.
And so I started thinking Iwonder if we could go back to
(27:41):
our roots as a wellnessdestination.
And I'll tell you, it was aboutsix months before I spoke it
out loud, because when you thinkof what a wellness destination
is, you think of like Sedona orPalm Springs, it's all the
frou-frou, spas and all thosekinds of things.
We're not that, and so I'm likeI don't know if we can actually
do this.
I finally started talking aboutsix months later.
I finally started talking tosome tourism experts and I said
(28:02):
this is what I'm thinking.
Have I lost my mind?
They're no, no, absolutely youneed to go do it.
You need to do it now.
And so the very first avenuethat we took with to look at
blue zones but it's incrediblyexpensive to be a blue zone, to
get certified, to do theprogramming and then to maintain
it because you have to haveprogramming and all that.
But as I started really digginginto the wellness tourism,
(28:26):
found the Wellness TourismAssociation and they are a
global organization and they setthe global standard for what it
is to be a wellness destinationand there are nine pillars.
So I just reached out to themand I went ahead and joined that
association on behalf ofMineral Wells and really got to
digging in and that was muchmore attainable and it was much
more in line with what we weretrying to do anyway, and so, of
(28:50):
the nine pillars, we're onlymissing two.
I actually had them come in anddo an assessment of us to see
where we are.
I thought we were missing three.
Actually we're only missing twoSustainability policy and
practices, and then a wideselection of healthy dining, and
truly that's what we're missing.
So it was no surprise.
In the process of doing that.
So since 2014, the number onething that a wellness traveler
(29:12):
is looking for is experiences innature.
Well, there's that outdooradventure piece that we have
because we are an outdoordestination.
We have three state parks, wehave four lakes, we have two
sections of the Brazos Riverthat come through, we've got
more than 30 miles of hiking,biking trails.
So we're moving into thatdirection.
We're working with the WellnessTourism Association.
(29:32):
And then we decided, well, whatif we went after Wellness
Capital of Texas?
So I reached out to our thenrepresentative, glenn Rogers,
and I said, hey, we would liketo do this, would you help us?
And he said absolutely.
So he put me in contact withhis team and we worked through
that and put together all thedocumentation.
We had to go to legislation,like we, the mayor and the owner
(29:54):
of crazy water, the water, andI went down to Austin, spoke in
front of our mayor, spoke infront of the at the legislative
session and then, at the verylast possible minute, in the
last legislative session, atlike midnight, june 18th of 2023
, it was signed into law.
We're the wellness capital ofTexas, so yeah, and we're still
(30:15):
kind of a big deal.
We're the wellness capital ofTexas, so yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
Kind of a big deal.
Speaker 3 (30:19):
We're still working towards the global designation.
That's so exciting.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
So y'all the history here is so beautifully woven
into the present, which we'lldive into in our next episode.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
So make sure to subscribe to the Romies Podcast
if you haven't yet.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
That's right.
See y'all next time.
We hope we've inspired you thisepisode so join us next time.
Please subscribe to rate andshare our podcast with your
friends or you know whomever?
And please like and follow uson Instagram, youtube and
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Speaker 1 (30:53):
We are also on X and on all social platforms.
We are at TheRomies that'sT-H-E-R-O-A-M-I-E-S, and our
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Speaker 2 (31:05):
At wwwtheromiescom, that's right, that's.
T-h-e-r-o-a-m-i-e-scom.
We'll be there until next time.
Yeah, thanks for listening.
Bye.
Hi, I'm Alexa and I'm Rory, and together we are the
Romies.
We are married To each other.
Right, we are a touring musicalduo.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
And our music has taken us to all kinds of places
all around the world and keepsus always on the go.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
So we hope you enjoy our stories and adventures while
running around working to keepall your plates spinning.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
And we hope, to facilitate your busy lifestyle
and feed your inner travel bug.
Hi everyone, welcome to theRomy's Podcast.
I'm Alexa.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
And I'm Rory.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
We are excited to continue sharing our Mineral
Wells series with you.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Yes, we are.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Mineral Wells is just about two and a half hours from
us here in Waco, texas, and youcan take some back roads to get
there or go through Fort Worthon your way.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
We took the back roads.
It was nice.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
So, however you like to road trip, we definitely
encourage you to take the roadtrip to Mineral Wells.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Deaf.
Now they can ship you theirmagic water if you end up flying
.
But if you road trip, you cantake home those five gallon
barrels of the stuff, just likewe did, yes, of the good stuff.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Now, if you're not sure what we're talking about,
check out our previous episodeto hear all about the famous
crazy water that put this townon the map.
Now, in today's episode, we'regoing to deep dive into this
town's history with the help ofour tour guide, Rose Jordan.
Awesome, yes, she's beenworking with the Mineral Wells
Tourism Bureau.
She loves the town.
She knows its stories insideand out, so there's no better
(01:31):
guide than Rose to share MineralWells' rich history with us.
We started a walking tour withher and began at a very
unassuming well.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Indeed.
Here's Rose, here's Rose at avery unassuming.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
Well Indeed.
Here's Rose.
Here's Rose.
The Lynch family Judge AlvisLynch and his wife lived in
Denison and they were movingwest looking for a place to stay
and they decided to makeMineral Wells their home, and
they Was there a town here atthe?
time there wasn't.
There was nothing here.
No wells, no anything, justcountry.
And so, for whatever reason,they picked Mineral Wells.
And so what do you do when youfind a new home?
You've got to find water.
And so they hired somebody todrill a well and in exchange
(02:11):
their payment was three oxen.
The original well is actuallyback over in another section,
but they started it.
When they first started drinkingthat water, it smelled funny,
it tastes a little funny, sothey decided to test it on their
cattle.
Cattle were drinking it.
Nothing happened to like okay,we should, should be good.
So they started drinking it andthey both had some different
(02:33):
kinds of ailments rheumatism ordigestive issues or whatever and
they noticed that as they weredrinking the water those
ailments were going away and soobviously worried about
something like that's going toget out really fast.
And people just startedflocking to mineral wells for
the water.
And so this particular wellwe're standing on the northwest
(02:54):
corner of the Crazy Water Hotelthis particular well was the
third well to be dug.
What's really cool is I finallyfound the first written
documentation about this storyjust a few weeks ago.
Up till now it's just beenlegend, but I found a firsthand
account of this story and it wasone of the kids, one of the
(03:15):
school kids.
So there was a woman in townwho everybody thought was crazy
and she was hanging out by this.
Well, this was the third wellto be dug.
It was then called the Wiggins.
Well, and over a period of time, she was drinking the water and
she became less crazy.
What we think is she probablyhad something like, um, dementia
, maybe some Alzheimer's.
But also, to you know, when youknow about the chemical, the
(03:38):
chemistry of your brain, youknow if you're really really off
on things like magnesium orcalcium, your brain does funny
things to you.
In whatever case, it was, thewater was making her feel better
and less crazy.
So the school kids around towncalled her the crazy woman.
So this became the crazywoman's well.
It was later shortened to crazywater or crazy well, and so
(04:01):
that's how we have the crazywater hotel.
And as you walk around town yousee crazy, crazy everything,
because this was here beforethis.
Yes, all.
So this was in like 1877 orjust a little bit before this
hotel was actually.
This is actually the secondcrazy water hotel.
The first crazy water hotel, Ithink, was a block or two away
from this, but it burnt down.
It was built in 1912 and burntdown in a huge fire in town.
(04:24):
This one was built in 1925.
And then the Baker Hotel wasbuilt in 1929.
So this one is not only first,but it's the one that carries
our story Crazy Water.
So every time you see crazyaround town, it all started
right here with a woman who'sdrinking this well, drinking
water from this well.
That everybody thought wascrazy and became better.
(04:45):
1877 is the year our city wasfounded, and so that picture you
just took the man on a donkeythat is the most iconic photo
that we have of judge AlvisLynch, and people will say that
you know they thought it was aman on a donkey drinking a
bottle of hooch.
He's not carrying a bottle ofhooch, he's carrying our water.
So that's what all that was.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
That's awesome and for those of you who are
listening, obviously you don'thave video, and so we're
standing like when I think thatI'm going to go to a, well, I'm
thinking like an old school,well, like you can drop your
pail in and grab something.
I mean, we're basically at likea manhole.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
It's a really dingy yellow square manhole.
So it's a square and a hole wehave a square we have a plan to
um replace get the well workingagain, number one, okay and then
replace this metal grate with aplate glass so that you can see
it down in there and see itworking, and then put a historic
sign up here explaining what itis Right.
(05:47):
Yeah, so cool.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Yep, yep, so when y'all come and visit, that might
already be up.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
So back in the day we would have people come in town,
and so we know this from oldpostcards.
We've got several old historicpostcards of Mineral Wells and
on the back people would writeI'm going to mineral wells for a
season, and a season usuallymeant months, a couple of months
, two months, three months, totake the waters, and by take the
(06:14):
waters they meant drinking itor it could have been bathing in
it.
And so we actually have seenold prescription pads where the
doctor has written, oldprescription pads where the
doctor has written take numbertwo this many times a day for
this long, take number threethis many times a day for this
long.
And so they actually literallywere prescribing our mineral
water to deal with whatever yourailments were.
(06:36):
And so you can't see it rightnow because the famous is under
it's under renovation, butthere's a sign in there from way
back when that talks about allthe different ailments that they
believe to help with digestiveissues, rheumatoid arthritis,
migraines, just all thosedifferent kinds of things.
And so back in the 60s and 70ssome things changed that made it
(06:56):
so that we can't make theclaims about our water, but it
was also the turnaround of theoriginal part of our decline for
mineral wells.
So about that time the FDAnumber one said that we can't
make those claims about ourwater anymore.
Around that same time peoplediscovered it was easier to take
an aspirin to deal with thesymptoms than it is to actually
root out and find out what'scausing your ailments and then
(07:18):
deal with that and actually cureyour body Right and actually
cure your body.
At the same time then ourmilitary base was decommissioned
and shut down.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
So you guys had a military base here.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
Massive.
It was Fort Walters.
It was massive, and so if you,basically if you flew a
helicopter in the Vietnam War,99 percent of them were trained
right here in Mineral Wells atFort Walters, and so our base
was huge.
We had helipads, differentplaces across the county.
Yeah, so when you kind ofcombine all those things, not
only did a massive chunk of ourpopulation disappear when the
(07:51):
base shut down, but also ourtourism the main thing that
people were coming for, ourwater suddenly now become less
important, less significantbecause it was easier to just
take an aspirin.
So, yeah, but back in the way,way back days, back in the early
1900s.
One of the things that we seenow is photos, oh, black and
white photos of people on thedonkey trails and so that's
(08:14):
actually that mountain rightthere and where, pretty much
today, if you go to a place andyou don't take a picture and put
it on instagram, were youreally there?
Well, in those days, if youcame Mineral Wells and you
didn't go up on the donkey trailand get your picture taken at
one of the cabins, like, wereyou really ever, ever, in
Mineral Wells?
That's like that's kind of theold, old story.
Instagram is seeing those.
(08:35):
Yeah.
So we have a lot of people thatwe we would love to have the
donkey trails back, butliabilities and all the things
that's not happening.
So yeah, yeah, there was athousand step stairway going up
the side of the mountain and itwas called the fat man's reducer
.
So we've got a historicpostcard of that.
So yeah, yeah, yeah, reduce youall the way, yeah.
And then I don't know if youguys saw the welcome sign when,
(08:56):
when we were coming into town upon the hill, reminds you of the
Hollywood sign.
So it's two mountains over, butit actually was.
Ours was before the Hollywoodsign.
And the man, mr Griffith, whowent back to Hollywood and built
the Hollywood sign we have aphotograph of him up on the
rooftop of this hotel looking atthat sign before the Hollywood
(09:17):
sign was built.
So legend has it that he gotthe idea from here.
Whether or not that's true wedon't have it on paper, but if
you look at the time frames andyou look that he was here, that
works.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
Now, when you walk around downtown you see a lot of
historic buildings, and Rosehas some historic insight on
those as well.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
Go Rose.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
Submineral Wells has over 100 historic buildings in
our downtown.
We are a nationally registeredhistoric district.
Back in the 50s and 60s thetowns that had money actually a
lot of them took their historicbuildings down and just rebuilt
all new stuff.
So one of the blessings of nothaving had a lot of money in the
50s and 60s is that now we havesomething really special.
(09:58):
We have a hundred more than ahundred historic buildings here
in our downtown.
So we wouldn't have had that, Ithink, if we'd had money.
So that's been really great.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
Another thing that led us walking and driving
around Mineral Wells downtownare the murals.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
Now we've talked about murals in our episode
about Somerset in the LakeCumberland area, which is
episode 212.
And you can also take a muraltour in Lancaster, California,
episode 211.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
And there was a mural tour trail thing in Port
Angeles as well.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
Yes, there was, yeah, Okay so it's a.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
Thing.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
It's a thing, but Mineral Wells has its own unique
take on the stories behindtheir murals and.
Rose tells us a little bitabout that.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
And interactive as well.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
So one of the things that we started doing when we
started kind of reviving ourtown back is some of the
buildings that were ugly lookingbut didn't still have their
historic value.
So if it was brick that hadnever been painted on, we didn't
touch that.
If it was a facade that hadnever been touched, we didn't
paint over it.
But some of the buildings hadalready been painted over and
(11:02):
they were ugly, had already beenpainted over and they were ugly
, and so what we started doingwas bringing in muralists to put
murals in our downtown so thatwhile they were waiting for
their renovations, then we hadsomething pretty to look at.
And we actually have two thatare interactive murals, and this
one is the Goodnight Lovingmural and it's interactive
because if you're standing inthe right place of the parking
lot, that mountain actuallylines up to that mountain, so it
(11:25):
looks like the Cowboys arecoming down out of the mountain
and that cowboy that's theregetting water with his horse it
was actually our councilmanDoyle light, and so the muralist
painted him.
The other interactive one is afew blocks down and it has it's
a cocapella mural, but it has apart of the Baker Hotel and the
bell tower is chopped off of it,so that if you're standing in
(11:46):
the right place in the parkinglot, the bell tower of the mural
is finished out with the actualbell tower of the Baker Hotel.
So those are really cool.
That's cool.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Now Mineral Wells has two significant and historic
hotels.
Rose tells us about those next.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
They're really cool.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
So the Baker Hotel is the other historic hotel and
it's not ready yet.
It was originally built in 1929and opened right after the
stock market crash, and evenstill she thrived because people
were still coming for thewaters.
So the Baker Hotel we've gotstories of, like the Three
Stooges were there or Lyndon BJohnson has been there, and so a
(12:25):
lot of famous people went tothat hotel.
Well, actually, this one too,the crazy water hotel, and that
we're in right now so in thecrazy water hotel up on the
seventh floor there's a ballroomand it was.
Do you know who mary martin isthe original peter pan okay okay
.
So she had a dance studio upthere and the way that she paid
for it was she performed forpeople down here.
(12:46):
And then also at one time therewas the crazy radio gang.
A radio show came out of this.
But over at the Baker Hotel wehad lots of famous people over
there.
So in 1972, it closed its doorsfor the last time.
We told the story a while agoabout kind of the decline of
Mineral Wells.
The FDA said we couldn't makethose claims.
People were taking aspirin.
The military closed up and left.
(13:08):
So the Baker Hotel in 1972closed her doors for the last
time.
And so she has sat looming overour city for 50 plus years,
just empty, and until 2019, mostof the windows were beat out,
Like it was just she was justthis big shadow over the town.
And in June of 2019, theannouncement was made this this
(13:29):
finance group had come togetherto purchase the hotel.
So up to that point between 72and 2019, different people have
tried to take over the Baker andrenovate.
But one of the things that wasdifferent about this time in
2019 was that this groupactually purchased the hotel.
All those other times it stayedunder the ownership of the
things that was different aboutthis time in 2019 was that this
group actually purchased thehotel.
All those other times it stayedunder the ownership of the Horn
(13:50):
family and so people would try,and when they couldn't make it,
you could failed.
The Horn family still owned it.
And so in 2019, this finance,this group of investors, came
together and actually purchasedthe hotel, and so it was a big
media day in June of 2019.
From the steps of the BakerHotel.
We saw the finance, all of theinvestors there.
(14:13):
We have signed, we havepurchased the hotel.
Construction begins immediately.
So the construction fence wentup and things happened.
Well, even then, for years,people would say, well, when the
Baker Hotel comes back, it'llsave our town.
Okay, so then 2019 happens, theBaker has been purchased,
construction is to beginimmediately, but still people
said, yeah, that'll happen whenpigs fly.
(14:35):
Now, not all of us.
There was a group of naysayersthat said it'll happen when pigs
fly, but there are a lot of usthat believe it's happening.
Now here we are, five, sixyears later.
We still believe.
It just got derailed, slowedway down by COVID Supply chain,
people being able to work.
You know, hospitality financingstopped.
They weren't putting anythinginto hospitality, so COVID just
(14:57):
really slowed the whole projectdown.
But that summer 2019, we have agroup here called Leadership
Mineral Wells.
It's a different group thatgoes through every year.
It's adults in different partsof the community and so they
just go.
They spend nine months learningabout our community and then
they always have a class project.
But class 23 were the ones thatput the crazy sign up, the red
(15:18):
and green crazy sign.
So that's a historic.
That's a replica of theoriginal and the original was
more ceramic.
That was one of their projectswas to put that up prior to that
um in 2018.
I don't remember what the classnumber was, but they put um.
So if you're at the baker hotel, you'll see these blue signs
covering a lot of the windowsand doorways and some of them
(15:39):
have been taken down sinceconstruction started.
But it was a historic walkingtour.
You could walk around the bakerhotel and if you read the signs
, it gave you a history aboutour town and it talked about our
attractions and those kinds ofthings.
Well, in 2019, that class wasclass 25 and their project was
to restore the historic welcomesign up on the mountain.
(16:02):
It was in bad, bad shape.
It was rusted through, itwasn't lit anymore.
It was in terrible shape.
So, to do that, the Hollywoodright right.
So this connects back to theHollywood story.
So, but that costs manythousands of dollars to do.
It just so happened that thatparticular class was phenomenal
at fundraising and they just hadthis synergy.
That was great.
Well, one of the things thatthey did for their fundraiser is
(16:25):
you remember the big pig thatwe saw at the Coffee and
Cocktails?
Okay, this was at the same time, so our downtown renovation
started in 2018.
October 2018 was when thatstore opened, and so shortly
later, they put that patio inthe back and they put a stage
out there, and so we had ourfirst live music in downtown
there at Coffee and Cocktails.
So, for their fundraiser andactually Brandon was part of
(16:47):
that class they bought that pigand they put it up on the stage
behind where the bands performed, and for $5, you could sign
that pig, and if you signed it,you were one of the believers
saying we believe it's going tohappen.
It was also a little bit of asnub to the naysayers saying
it's going to happen, and sothat's the fly and pick story,
so that we do still believe theBaker hotel is going to happen.
(17:08):
But the other thing to the otherpiece to that story is that,
yes, we believe the Baker'sgoing to be a big deal when she
gets here, but as a community,we stopped waiting and we
decided, okay, we have to dosomething, cause if you had
driven through this town eight,six, eight years ago, you'd have
just kept on driving through towherever you were going.
There was nothing here in thedowntown, not a reason to stop.
(17:29):
We didn't have shops, we didn'thave restaurants down here.
I mean, there just wasn'tanything here, a lot of boarded
up, closed up shops.
So, as a community, in 2016, wedecided, well, if the baker
comes, that's great, but we'renot waiting.
So we're going to go and figureout what we want to be and
start this renovation and takeour you know, get our town
(17:49):
moving again, so that if thebaker comes, we'll be ready for.
Because, truthfully, back then,if the baker had been finished
and you had come to stay thenight in the baker with our town
the way it was, you'd have beenokay.
Now what?
You'd have gone in the baker,you'd have come back out.
You're like the baker's great,but what do I do now?
So now we have something forpeople to actually want to do.
(18:11):
Now people are coming evenwithout the baker ready, so just
imagine what it's going to belike when the baker gets here.
But when you see the murals ofthe flying pigs, when you see
the pig, if you come to myoffice, it's full of flying pigs
, people even.
It's full of flying pigs,people even.
Because I share this story.
All the time bus groups come inI'll hop on be their tour guide
(18:32):
.
I share the story.
You know, I've done it forhistoric tours and stuff, and so
people are leaving me flyingpigs all the time.
When you see flying pigs inMerrill Wells, it actually means
something to us.
It's not just a fun yardornament, we actually believe
we're seeing our people aredoing the impossible things here
.
So that's the flying pig storyand the Baker Hotel story too.
(18:52):
Yeah, so the Baker Hotel, it isa historic preservation project.
It's the biggest historicpreservation of a hotel.
I can't remember if it's in thestate of Texas or in the
country, but it is a.
It's a huge, huge deal, and sobecause of that, big chunks of
the funding are historic grants,historic, you know those kinds
of things historic credits, andso they have to keep it as true
as they can, and so back thenthe rooms were small.
(19:14):
Some of the things that werenotable about the Baker Hotel
when it got here was that it wasthe first one to have this
great, big, huge pool here inTexas.
It also was an early adopter tothis technology of as soon as
you open the door to your room,the lights and the air
conditioning would come on.
So at the baker hotel, she'sgot she.
(19:35):
There are so many stories aboutthe baker hotel that she just
like in fact where she sits nowis not where they originally
started building it.
Where the baker hotel pool isis where they started building
that.
And then mr baker went to um, Ithink it was a place in
california and he saw this bigpool and he's like we have to
have that at the baker.
So they stopped construction onthat, move the baker over and
(19:57):
put the pool in the footings.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
They made the pool right.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
So and then I mean we have pictures they had already
started the construction on thehotel.
So yeah, it was really cool.
But because it's a historicpreservation project, they have
to try to keep things true andthat's kind of part of what
slowed it down.
So not only with COVID didhospitality funding stop because
nobody was going to loan forhospitality, but the other piece
(20:21):
too is that if you think aboutit's a historic project, so if
you need a sink in your room,well, you need 167 out of 147.
It's going to be 147 rooms,well, they can't just be any
sink, it's got to be somethingthat's going to fit the time
period, those kinds of things,right.
So then think about supplychain and how that came to a
(20:41):
halt with COVID.
So you've got hospitalityfunding is a problem, supply
chain is now a problem.
So that's been a lot of theslowdown of it.
On several of the floors wherethere were two rooms, they will
become one because they were sosmall.
Because of the historic natureof the project, I think they've
just is it one whole floor thatthey're keeping original?
But in those floors wherethey've made two rooms one,
(21:01):
they've still kept the original.
So the hallway still has to bethe same.
So they kept the door for bothrooms, but only one of them is
usable.
There's one more piece of thefunding that they need to kick
it back in gear.
So they never fully stopped,but they've had to go really
slow.
Right, when they get this lastpiece in they'll kick it in full
gear.
But some of the things that theydid.
(21:21):
So there are 997 windows on theBaker Hotel.
They couldn't be, and most ofthem were shot out not shot out,
but most of them were broken.
Well, they couldn't just bereplaced, they have to be
restored.
997 windows came out, had to belabeled, came out, restored by
a craftsman and put back in.
(21:42):
Yes, so like the roof.
So the next thing was the roof.
Well, that roof was importedfrom Italy.
So it's like kind of a big deal, but that I mean, I don't think
they had to import it this time, but it's that terracotta roof.
So they had to replace the roofand because they had to dry it
in, because a lot of the damagewas, you know, rain leakage and
bats, um, so yeah, so those beena few things, but.
(22:05):
But then our general contractor,mark Rawlings, is this
phenomenal like.
I don't know how this manthinks.
But there's a room in theground floor of the hotel that
has all the artifacts, and soall the light fixtures came out,
but they've been labeled, so weknow where they go back to.
All the doors from all therooms came down and they're all
(22:25):
labeled, so you know exactlywhere they go back to.
All the doors from all therooms came down and they're all
labeled, so you know exactlywhere they go back to.
And so, like they've even gotan old butler's door there so
that you know back in the day ifyou wanted to leave laundry for
them to do, you would put it inthis fixture in the door and
they would pick it up on theother side.
So we still have some of thoseold doors.
So, yeah, it's a really cool tosee.
I can't remember what he callsthe room, but it's phenomenal.
(22:47):
And then the other artifactsthat they have found throughout
the hotel that they're not goingto reuse will later become part
of a museum there at the hotel,but they're all down in a room.
It's really cool, yeah.
Yeah, it had restaurants in it,it had a bowling alley in it,
it had a gymnasium in it, it hadmineral spas in it.
(23:10):
It was where all the famouspeople came yeah I mean back in
that time, you'll see, you'llsee places in old newspapers
where people wrote stuff aboutus, or you'll see in old
advertising postcards that therewere two things that they used
to call us america's greathealth resort and where, where
America drinks its way to health, everybody was coming here for
the water.
Yeah, yeah.
So our historic post office isover by the Baker and we've got
(23:33):
a picture of Judy Garland in thehistoric post office.
They were doing a big.
Was it a fundraiser?
Remember what that was?
The big stamp thing and so we'vegot a historic picture of Judy
Garland over there at the postoffice.
Yeah, it's really cool Likeeverybody came here, and so
we've got a historic picture ofJudy Garland over there at the
post office.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
Yeah it's really cool , like everybody came here.
And finally, we have the CrazyWater Hotel, which is where
you're going to find the crazycoffee and water bar we told you
about in our previous episode,so check that one out if you
haven't heard it yet.
There are also some other funshops inside the hotel and even
a salon, which is actually whereRory made his very first stop
when we arrived at Mineral Wells.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
That's true.
I walked immediately into thesalon there in the Crazy Water
Hotel and they had someoneavailable.
Yes, so you got to.
You know, stay looking sharpfor podcasting, even if you
can't see me, Right.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
You can watch them in your heart.
Maybe we'll post this onYouTube one day.
All right, so Rose even has astory or two about the Crazy
Water Hotel, so here she goes.
Speaker 3 (24:32):
So the Crazy Water Hotel is actually?
It's a public benefitcorporation, so it's not owned
by one person.
It actually has 88 localinvestors.
The primary investor on thisproject is also a primary
investor on the Baker Hotel, butthat one will be a little bit
different.
But this one is a publicbenefit corporation project.
So what that means is that theycan.
(24:53):
It means a lot of things, butwhat it means for our community
is that while they can keep aneye on profit with it being a
public benefit corporation, theykeep more eye on what's best
for the community.
So they will make choices herethat if you were looking for
profit first, it would be onething, but they don't do that
here.
When they're doing things here,they're thinking about the best
(25:15):
benefit for our community.
So yeah, and so we also live inan opportunity zone, and so I
think both of them sit insidethat opportunity zone.
So in here, the water bar wasoriginally a pavilion.
You see signs in there that sayCrazy Water Pavilion.
Also, where you got your waterbottled, that was a pavilion.
(25:35):
So back in the day we hadpavilions all over town and each
pavilion had its own specialty.
So where today you would bellyup to the bar and drink your
beer back in those days yes, sir, that's where you check it when
today you would belly up to thebar and drink beer.
Well, in those days you wouldbelly up to the bar, to one of
(25:57):
the pavilion bars, and drink thewater, and it was pricey, but
each pavilion had a specialty.
So it might be dancing, or itmight be shuffleboard, or it
might be card games or dominoes,and so you just hang out at the
pavilions, drink your water anddo whatever entertainment thing
you had.
Yeah, we saw the advertising ofa heater outhouse, and outhouses
were in need when peoplestarted drinking the water one
of my most favorite advertisingpostcard and they're all
(26:19):
cartoonish, but they all showsome version of a person
drinking water, drinking crazywater and running to the
outhouse.
It's really that number fourwater that they're depicting
because it cleans you out.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
So yeah, so good.
Yeah, and if you're busydrinking the good stuff, then
you're not spending your timedrinking harmful stuff.
That's true, just saying.
Speaker 3 (26:39):
Yeah, we were really looking at going down the Blue
Zone route.
When you're marketing adestination, you really have to
figure out what's the one thingthat sets you apart that will
make it worth people coming toyou.
For At that time, what we weremarketing for was outdoor
adventure.
But if you think about whereMineral Wells is and you drive
30 minutes or an hour away fromhere, like everybody around us
(27:00):
has some form of outdooradventure, outdoor adventure is
not enough to set us apart.
What does set us apart is ourwater.
But also a tourist generallyisn't coming for water unless
you start talking about wellness, because I mean you can get,
you can go to 7-Eleven anywhereand grab a bottle of water
unless there's something specialabout the water.
So it was about that time thatI started thinking okay, in this
(27:21):
next coming year, how am Igoing to market us as a
destination?
And very sheepishly, I startedthinking.
I knew the renovation that hadstarted and I knew some things
that we had coming, and I knew alot of it involved wellness in
our water.
And so I started thinking Iwonder if we could go back to
(27:41):
our roots as a wellnessdestination.
And I'll tell you, it was aboutsix months before I spoke it
out loud, because when you thinkof what a wellness destination
is, you think of like Sedona orPalm Springs, it's all the
frou-frou, spas and all thosekinds of things.
We're not that, and so I'm likeI don't know if we can actually
do this.
I finally started talking aboutsix months later.
I finally started talking tosome tourism experts and I said
(28:02):
this is what I'm thinking.
Have I lost my mind?
They're no, no, absolutely youneed to go do it.
You need to do it now.
And so the very first avenuethat we took with to look at
blue zones but it's incrediblyexpensive to be a blue zone, to
get certified, to do theprogramming and then to maintain
it because you have to haveprogramming and all that.
But as I started really digginginto the wellness tourism,
(28:26):
found the Wellness TourismAssociation and they are a
global organization and they setthe global standard for what it
is to be a wellness destinationand there are nine pillars.
So I just reached out to themand I went ahead and joined that
association on behalf ofMineral Wells and really got to
digging in and that was muchmore attainable and it was much
more in line with what we weretrying to do anyway, and so, of
(28:50):
the nine pillars, we're onlymissing two.
I actually had them come in anddo an assessment of us to see
where we are.
I thought we were missing three.
Actually we're only missing twoSustainability policy and
practices, and then a wideselection of healthy dining, and
truly that's what we're missing.
So it was no surprise.
In the process of doing that.
So since 2014, the number onething that a wellness traveler
(29:12):
is looking for is experiences innature.
Well, there's that outdooradventure piece that we have
because we are an outdoordestination.
We have three state parks, wehave four lakes, we have two
sections of the Brazos Riverthat come through, we've got
more than 30 miles of hiking,biking trails.
So we're moving into thatdirection.
We're working with the WellnessTourism Association.
(29:32):
And then we decided, well, whatif we went after Wellness
Capital of Texas?
So I reached out to our thenrepresentative, glenn Rogers,
and I said, hey, we would liketo do this, would you help us?
And he said absolutely.
So he put me in contact withhis team and we worked through
that and put together all thedocumentation.
We had to go to legislation,like we, the mayor and the owner
(29:54):
of crazy water, the water, andI went down to Austin, spoke in
front of our mayor, spoke infront of the at the legislative
session and then, at the verylast possible minute, in the
last legislative session, atlike midnight, june 18th of 2023
, it was signed into law.
We're the wellness capital ofTexas, so yeah, and we're still
(30:15):
kind of a big deal.
We're the wellness capital ofTexas, so yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
Kind of a big deal.
Speaker 3 (30:19):
We're still working towards the global designation.
That's so exciting.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
So y'all the history here is so beautifully woven
into the present, which we'lldive into in our next episode.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
So make sure to subscribe to the Romies Podcast
if you haven't yet.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
That's right.
See y'all next time.
We hope we've inspired you thisepisode so join us next time.
Please subscribe to rate andshare our podcast with your
friends or you know whomever?
And please like and follow uson Instagram, youtube and
Facebook.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
We are also on X and on all social platforms.
We are at TheRomies that'sT-H-E-R-O-A-M-I-E-S, and our
main hub is our website.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
At wwwtheromiescom, that's right, that's.
T-h-e-r-o-a-m-i-e-scom.
We'll be there until next time.
Yeah, thanks for listening.
Bye.
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