SALT LAKE CITY — Salt Lake City once had a public bathhouse that drew visitors from across Utah and beyond to experience the so-called healing waters.
The building still stands at Warm Springs Park, located at 840 North Beck Street in the Capitol Hill neighborhood.
To learn more about the site, I met with Sylvia Nibley, founder of the Warm Springs Alliance, a nonprofit working to protect and restore the area.
“This is one of the most important historic sites we have in the whole area,” Nibley said. “And a lot of people don’t know that. But this was — and still is — an Indigenous sacred site because of the hot springs that have been flowing here for thousands of years.”
Long before settlers arrived, the Ute, Shoshone and Goshute peoples gathered at the springs, honoring their healing properties and the land that sustained them.
By the 1820s, the area had been documented by fur trappers. Later, pioneers from the church Church of Jesus Christ Latter-day Saints developed the site, building a modest public bathhouse in 1850. The springs soon gained a reputation for the healing qualities of their mineral-rich waters.
In 1921, the City built the Wasatch Springs Plunge, a large bathhouse and community center that welcomed generations of Utahns. The Plunge and its pools, however, closed in the 1970s. Afterward, the building housed the Children’s Museum until 2005.
“That water has not been utilized for about 50 years,” Nibley added. “And as people hear about this place, there’s more and more momentum building around — hey, like, why are we not utilizing this place for healing again?”
Nibley said grassroots interest has continued to grow.
She took me to see the water source. A few hundred gallons of warm, mineral-rich water still flow into the area every hour from the Wasatch Mountains. The source is snowmelt that seeps nearly a mile underground, becomes naturally heated by geothermal activity, and rises back up through the Wasatch Fault.
According to the city, bathing is not currently allowed in the small pools on-site.
Salt Lake City owns the property and has invested about $8 million in structural repairs. But Nibley said the city has not yet decided what to do with the building or whether it will ever be used as a bathhouse again.
“We have this amazing resource that’s just not being utilized,” Nibley said. “It’s hot mineral water that comes up out of the ground at a perfect bathing temperature. We know that soaking in water like this is really good for us, physically, emotionally. It allows us to connect with each other. It’s an equalizer.”
