Archives for February 2008

Memories of Garland from Janis (Sharpe) Brotherton circa 1953-1963

---

My name is Janis (Sharpe) Brotherton, the only daughter of Cameron and Medora Sharpe, who with our Aunt Laura Mae Mooney owned and operated Garland Mineral Springs from 1953 on into the 1960's.

I was 8 years old when my family began to make our home at Garland, and lived there until I left to attend college in 1963. I will be retracing my steps through the forest, along the bank of the North Fork, up and down horse trails and logging roads, and yes, even to the foot of Glacier Peak. As I stroll through memories of the 10 years I lived and played at the magical place called Garland Mineral Springs, my hope is that you, Reader, will experience some of the joy and wonder it has stamped into my heart forever.

My parents lived there until about 1966-67. It's been interesting reading the memories and beliefs of the various contributors.

1. The water in the large spring that supplied the swimming pool was never heated...only pumped into the pool. My father, Cameron Sharpe took regular temp. readings and stated that it maintained a consistant temp. of 68 degrees F even in winter. Real toasty on a COLD day!
2. The only water heated at Garland Mineral Springs was for drinking, cooking or bathing, and was clear, clean water from our water source on Troublesome Mt. It was piped into the lodge and heated there by a huge wood-buring furnace. The lodge was steam heated, and over 30 cords of wood were used yearly.
3. I have VERY fond memories of the Petterson family and have often wondered where to find Carol. We were friends, and I spent some overnights in their home. Ernie was an excellent carpenter who constructed the new bath house and a new fire escape staircase at the back of the lodge. I recall sitting in the Coffee Shop listening to him whistle hymns as he worked. He was an amazing whistler, and I can still hear it! My parents really loved Ernie and Alta, and often mentioned their gracious generosity to our family!

I know that my memories and perspectives will never measure up to the writings my mother had been working on before the fire took it all. She never wrote about Garland after that. I believe she closed that chapter in her life.  I guess it will merely remain a sweet memory for those of us who enjoyed that place at that time. There is really not much now to save. The river truly runs through it all!

This brochure is courtesy of the Monroe Historical Society donated to the collection by Tim Raetzloff. This brochure mentions W. L. Kaupp the manager of Garland in 1937.

---

Regain Your Health

Nature’s Healthful Springs

Garland Mineral Springs, an unusual pleasure and health resort, is located on the North Fork of the beautiful Skykomish River, fourteen miles northeast of Index, Washington, and the Great Northern Railway. A good auto road leads direct to the springs.

Being situated at an elevation of 1400 feet on the West slope of the Cascade Mountains, assures cool summer and mild winter weather, an ideal location for a health resort.

It consists of forty acres of virgin timber, native flowers, and mountain streams.

There are several mineral springs, each composed of varying qualities of mineral salts which medical scientists have proven are necessary, in proper proportion, to rebuild and maintain bodily health.

So far as is known to the management, there are no other springs in the country containing so many of these essential mineral salts as are found in these famous waters.

Although discovered in the eighties, it was not incorporated by Mr. A. M. Garland and associates until 1926. These men had the vision and faith to go ahead and develop the property into what is now an exceptionally fine health and pleasure resort.

Bath and Massage Department

New, spacious quarters have been designed for the Hot Mineral Bath and Massage Department. Under this remodeled arrangement, there will be separate departments for the ladies and gentlemen.

A comfortable reception room where one may rest, read or relax, either before or after the treatment, has been equipped with comfortable chairs and restful reading lamps.

Individual locker-dressing rooms have been installed where complete privacy is insured. These rooms are equipped with mirror, chair and a dressing table.

Each department has private, individual bathrooms where one may take a restful bath in the health waters. These baths may be taken in a tub or in a sitz tub. A fresh water shower is also available.

The two massage rooms have been furnished with infra-red lamps and ultra-violet ray lamps along with luxurious upholstered massage tables. A modern colonic irrigation room completes the new outlay of this department.

All baths and treatments under direct supervision of licensed masseur.

Recreation

Hiking

Located in the Heart of the Cascades, with Forest Service Trails leading to many interesting places, hiking is a very popular feature.

Fishing

The North Fork of the Skykomish is noted as the home of the big Steelhead Trout. The river is also kept well stocked with Rainbow, Dolly Varden, and a good run of Cutthroat.

The Ideal Resort to

Accommodations

Hotel

The new hotel of twenty-two rooms, is beautifully finished throughout in native knotty cedar. Steam heat, attractive lobby, and comfortable, clean rooms make your stay enjoyable.

Dining Room

The dining room offers good, tasty meals, ranging in scope from short orders to full course dinners, prepared by an experienced chef. Special effort is given to luncheons and dinner parties.

Cabins

Thirty-five cabins, either furnished or unfurnished, modern or semi-modern, are equipped with electric lights and stoves.

Camp Ground

A shady auto park with community kitchen is available to those who travel with their own camping equipment.

Store

A well stocked grocery store is operated for those who wish to do their own cooking. Prices are in line with those of adjacent towns.

Baths

Hot Mineral Baths, Sitz Baths, Men’s and Ladies’ Massage Rooms, Blanket Packs.

Treatments

And benefits of drinking Spring Water---See Masseur.

Swimming Pool

A large outdoor swimming pool, forty by one hundred feet, of heated carbonated mineral water is one of the outstanding features at Garlands, both from a health and recreation standpoint.

Memories of Garland from Monroe Monitor July 31, 1985 (Courtesy of the Monroe Historical Society).

---

Garland Mineral Springs: 100 years of fascination

by Nellie E. Robertson

Garland Hot Springs, 14 miles north of Index in the heart of the Cascade Mountains, has attracted natives and visitors alike for nearly a hundred years and interest in the area hasn’t waned.

The present owner, the Rev. Cameron Sharpe and his late wife Medora, of Sultan, operated the Garland Mineral Springs during the 1950s.

Sharpe, now a widower, would like to see the place as it was before the devastating floods and fire; a place where Christians could gather in a wholesome environment, but his coin purse is empty.

Medicinal qualities found

Dr. J. N. Starr of Chicago was the first to develop the site when his wife, Carrie Starr, was afflicted with a swelling in her right knee which was diagnosed as being tubercular. A series of doctors told her amputation was the only answer.

The last two doctors consulted suggested Dr. Starr bring his wife to Puget Sound where there was no frost; a complete change might help her improve.

The Starrs arrived in Snohomish in August, 1888 but the change did not seem to improve her swollen knee and Dr. Starr had about decided to go back to Chicago when he learned from an Englishman about some wonderful springs in the valley of the North Fork of the Skykomish River near the place now called Index.

The Englishman told them the springs were so charged with gas that a bottle would not hold the water. He also said he had been in Baden Baden, Germany, and the water of these springs was much better.

The trek begins

In March of 1889, Dr. Starr found a guide and started for the springs with a pack train. He found the springs and stayed a few days building cabins and preparing to take Carrie into them.

In May of that year, Carrie, age 37, went by horseback along a poor mountain trail to reach the springs. The first night they stopped in Sultan and the next stop was near Index.

Her knee was so painful she stayed there with her maid and the rest of the party went on. In a few days, Carrie followed. In a deposition dated March 6, 1928, when she was 84 years old, she said: “On reaching the springs and not finding the comforts of life, I was not so well pleased, and I decided that I would not bathe in the water.

“But as time went on and my knee got much worse, I finally decided to bathe in the spring water.”

She took two baths every day for three weeks and at the end, she had no swelling in her knee at all.

In August she had to go back to Snohomish for the winter and in the summer of 1890, Dr. Starr had things much more comfortable for Carrie. She “bathed in the springs a great deal and was greatly improved.”

She fully recovered from her infirmity and Dr. Starr “took steps immediately to secure title to the lands on which is located these wonderful springs.”

Title secured

The Starrs secured a 40-acre land grant in May of 1896 signed by President Grover Cleveland and the area was known as the Starr Hot Springs. In 1928 it was known to the U.S. Forest as Soda Springs.

The springs became the Garland Mineral Springs in 1932 when the land was purchased by Charles Garland, Fred Monroe, both of Wenatchee, and Will Jorgenson of Everett.

In two years, there was a 3-story resort hotel with about 40 cabins, a heated swimming pool 105 by 40 feet, and a power plant activated by creek water.

Bert Spada of Index recalled the owners invested a great deal of money in the development and the county road winding five miles up from Galena to the site.

“As soon as the road was done, they had the grand opening and I was invited,” Spada said. “They used to have dances every Saturday night.”

Spada was county road foreman in the area then, a job he held for thirty years, and he did the best he could to keep the road open.

Garland became ill and went back to Wenatchee and the place was eventually sold. It’s said the U.S. Navy had a radio school there during World War II and that it was also a rehabilitation center.

In 1953, the Rev. Cameron Sharpe and his wife Medora, and his sister-in-law Laura Mae (Mooney) Hackama of Gold Bar, bought the property and operated it until the hotel burned Jan. 26, 1961.

Hakama’s first husband was killed in an Army Air Force jet accident in 1953 and she took some of the insurance money to pay half the down payment as a memorial to him. She lived with the Sharpes on the property for eight years.

They bought the Garland Mineral Springs for a place to present the gospel and provide a place that would be uplifting to people. Services were held in the lodge and on the porch.

At that time, in addition to the hotel, there were eight sleeper cabins which also had some facilities, and 14 housekeeping cabins, each with a sink, stove, toilet, electricity, water, and sewer.

The hotel had 22 bedrooms on two floors and every room had a washbowl. There were two lavatories on each floor and two bedrooms had bathtubs. There were showers and tubs in the basement with mineral water piped in to two of the tubs.

The power plant was run on water from Colton Creek. Chairs and tables in the lodge were hand made in Everett.

“It was a pretty nice operation at that time,” Sharpe, who still lives in Sultan, said.

They started the Troublesome Trail Dude Ranch for Children ages 8 to 16 years featuring a variety of activities. The rates in 1958 were $60 a week.

There were two devastating floods in November and December of 1959 covering the property with six feet of water. They were isolated for three days and severe damage was done to the cabins and grounds. Sharpe hiked out in his hip boots with the water and ooze reaching the boot tops.

Sharpe said it was declared a disaster area and the Army Engineers officer stated money could be used to clear and repair the damage but chose not to do the work because they “couldn’t maintain it.”

Sharpe, after contacting seven agencies with no results, built a dike to keep the river in its bed and it held until the flood of 1976.

Land surrounded

Sharpe’s property is completely surrounded by U.S. Forest Service land and the forest service has a right-of-way through Garland. The county road ends at the property line and a forest service road abuts the land on the other side.

Whenever low water permitted, Sharpe moved debris and re-opened the normal river channel. He spent about $10,000 on the project.

In 1960, they were closed down because the mineral spring water wasn’t chlorinated. Sharpe was incredulous because the water was so medicinal.

“There wasn’t one incident of infection,” Sharpe said pointing out the many salts and other minerals in the water purified it without adding chlorine.

One spring of clear soda water is 44 degrees the year around; the second spring runs from 70 to 76 degrees any time of the year; and the third one 74 to 80 degrees.

Sharpe said the temptation of the soda springs was too much for a local tavern owner one Fourth of July. He made several trips to the cold spring for the “natural mixer.”

There are 22 minerals in the other two springs. The 150,000 gallon pool was filled in two and a half days from the output of one of the springs.

Dr. Scholatz of the University of Vienna told the Sharpes there were only two springs in the world that compared with Garland for therapeutic quality.

In the middle 1950s, a German woman, wife of a U.S. Army sergeant, was strolling around visiting and took a handful of water from the spring and tasted it. She dropped to her knees and started drinking and remarked that it was just like Baden Baden, Germany where she used to spend two months every year.

Even the animals knew of the medicinal quality of the springs. Sharpe told of a doe who brought her two fawns to the springs. She nuzzled them into the mud and rolled them around. They were allowed to dry and then they went off into the surrounding woods.

Fire destroys hotel

On January 26, 1961, Medora heard a loud rapping at the door of the hotel, and a logger asked if she knew the roof was on fire. He dashed upstairs to see if he could do anything but ran down saying it was too late.

They made three trips inside to gather belongings and that was it; the hotel was a total loss. It left the cabins intact but burned the dressing shed alongside the 105x40 pool and scorched the posts around it.

In December of 1965, they moved to Sultan and then the vandalism began.

Sharpe had gathered about 10 thousand feet of timber to rebuild one story of the hotel and it was washed away in the 1980 flood. He had stacked the fireplace bricks for eventual use and they gradually disappeared.

Deep feelings about springs

“It’s been my life,” Sharpe added. People have wanted to buy it or invest in it but they want control of the policy.

Sharpe said of his philosophy: “I have tried to feel what others are feeling, but I could not extend that to alcohol and it was not allowed because of its destructiveness.”

“I’ve given 32 years of my life to it, and I’d rather let my kids enjoy it than let someone else have it,” he said of the future.

An armed Vietnam veteran usually clad in jungle camouflage clothes is caretaker of the deserted Garland Mineral Springs now and the sign says “No trespassing, survivors will be prosecuted.”