“The Springs of Soda”

Recently, Bill Horsley led a group of those interested in the history of Soda Springs’ various…well, springs, on a tour of some of the local highlights. Galen Wilson and Jerry Stoor from the Caribou Historical Society joined Horsley and a score of spring-devotees and the spring-curious.  The largish group made its way by car caravan around the environs of Soda Springs, from Steamboat Springs to Hooper Spring and all points between.  As the tour progressed, attendees were invited to sample the waters of the various, colorfully named water sources and compare them.  

“I think this one is the coldest and the best.  It’s my favorite,” Horsley said of Lover’s Delight at the base of Chester Hill on the banks of Soda Creek.  The spring was so-named for probably obvious reasons, with the more chaste patina of the times underwriting the implications.  The spring was also known as Svengali Springs, after the craftsman Ludvig Suhrke who built the walkway and benches around the spring.  Ludvig was said to resemble the character Svengali from the novel Trilby, and the subsequent films that chose to use the villain’s name for their title.  Svengali the character was a bit of a cad, so Horsley prefers the “Lover’s Delight” moniker.

The spring is near the edge of the creek down a slope, meaning that it can be harder for some people to access, even with the walkway.  Horsley apologized for the vegetation that was growing near the mouth of the spring, but the water comes out pure and fresh.  In fact, the same is true of most of the springs on the tour.  Due to space, there isn’t room for a catalogic recounting to the stops on the way, but a short recap of some of the highlights would read as follows:

Steamboat, accessible through the road west of the country club, was named by early trappers because of the sounds it made  “resembling a steamboat engine as it gurgled and then exploded from its cone into a steaming geyser 3 feet high,” according to Bill.  It is mostly submerged at this point, as its location was covered by water when Alexander Reservoir was filled in 1925.  As Galen Wilson points out, though, the spot where the waters bubble up can still be spotted just offshore when the waters are calm enough.

Hooper Springs was named after William Henry Hooper, Salt Lake banker, President of ZCMI, and business associate of Brigham Young.  While neither of the two church leaders ever lived in the Soda Springs area, both had summer homes where the town’s upper town was located during early settlement.  Fred Kiesel of the Natural Mineral Water Co., and Joseph T. Torgesen “placed a five foot diameter surplus pipe from the bottling works over the spring and laid planks across the marshy areas to improve access.”  In 1937, Mayor S.E. Matthews and Councilmen J.O. Wallace, R.J. Coppard, T.J. Corrigan, and C.A. Lallatin built the arched bridge and the lava rock enclosure around the spring.”  According to Bill and Galen, Hooper Springs is probably the most frequently visited of the remaining active springs.

Ludvig Shurke (Svengali himself!) returned to the story again as the original builder of the eight-sided canopy over the Octagon Spring.  As Horsley explained, the origin of the name (that is, whether the spring was named after the canopy or vice versa) is not known for sure, though the likely explanation is that the structure was built first and the design maintained over subsequent reconstructions.

During the tour, Horsley presented a fascinating overview of the evolution and use of many of the springs over the past.  

In 1893, mineral water from Soda Springs was awarded recognition by the World’s Fair and Exposition in Chicago, and historic bottles of locally sourced water have made their way to the Historical Society, as have other artifacts related to the history of the town’s geysers.  Members of the Caribou Historical Society are fonts of knowledge on the subject, and the museum on Hooper Ave is open on Saturdays when its members are not off on field trips.  

The tour finished at Octagon Spring, with the variant of Soda water many people prefer, which adds lemon and lime juice, as well as sugar to the effervescent drink.  As families and tour members chatted, Horsley continued to answer the many questions people still had.  

After spending a morning on tour with locals, visitors, and those in the know, many people came away with a new appreciation for the history that is literally right beneath their feet.