A Look Back At Meadow Hot Springs

Venetta B. Kelsey Interview about Meadow Hot Springs--2/2006

In the early years the excess water from the farms around Meadow used to run down there and we called it The Slew. This was on the way to the hot springs. We use to go there and pick water cress. We made salads with it, and it was good. This was all right by the road. The road went over a hill and down and out into the West Desert. And we’d catch polywogs in the spring too. You could look right down through the clear water and see the layers of rock, and we could walk around on shelves of the travertine deposits. At times, Dad used to go down there with all the wet ground and raise a garden. This must have been around The Slew and where we picked water cress. 

When I was real young, the boys would get their teams & horses and hook them up to a hayrack (a horse drawn hay wagon) so we’d have something to ride on. We’d take a lunch and ride down there in the evenings; some wanted to eat down there too. We would stop a little ways from the springs, and the guys would go one way, and the girls would go the other way, to get undressed and put swimming suites on. There weren’t many bushes, but there were little hills we could hide behind. Then we’d swim until we had all we wanted, then we’d come on home. Sometimes we’d come back after dark. This was always in summer, I never went in winter. That would have been in the 1910’s when we went with a hayrack. 

When I first went down there I must have been 12 or 14 years old. Some of our cousins would come to Meadow to visit our grandparents and we would go down to the warm springs for one night or one day. That was one of the fun things we got to do. Later, I remember going down there with boy friends or girl friends, so we were getting permission to take our parents cars--but we were too young to own a car of our own. This would have been in the 1920’s. 

There used to be a man and family living down there somewhere, maybe it was by The Slew (?). When each of his kids were old enough, he’s taken ‘em down to the hot springs and throw them in and tell ‘em to swim out. A lot of people thought he was a dare devil to do such a terrible thing. But they were good swimmers and divers; they took prizes for diving. 

There was never any buildings around there, just piles of soil, and some brush. It was never developed. We called it the Meadow Warm Springs. I never heard of anyone ever drowning in there. Roy, Moine (2 of Mom’s brothers) and I were baptisted there, all at the same time. I was too old--I should have been baptized a year or two before. It was on September 6, 1925. My brothers were nearer the right age of 8. We were just visiting Meadow at the time. I don’t remember who baptised me, I used to have it in my records somewhere. It would have been somebody who was active in the church, so he could do the baptising. I don’t remember what we worn, the guys may have just worn overalls (?). Over near Kanosh a few miles south of Meadow, was a place they called Winopah. It was another hot spring. Somebody developed it to the point that they had a cement swimmin’ pool with a spring board for diving and a dance hall, and other stuff like that. I can’t remember much about it, but they had it fixed up so they could charge people money to get in. People went in in groups. Venetta's or Mom's oldest brother Clinton, who organized a band and used to play all over Millard Country, used to play in his orchastra there. This was probably sometime in the late 1920’s and 1930’s. We used to go down there and dance at night. People came from quite a ways away to dance at Winopah. 

-From Michael R. Kelsey (06/2007)