Marlin, Texas

The city issued twenty-five thousand dollars in bonds to drill an artesian well. What came up was hot mineral water, and people soon claimed it could heal them. The first bath house went up in 1895. Others followed fast. At least two had big swimming pools under ornate covered buildings. Others offered marble tubs, private bathing rooms, cooling rooms, and massages. Thousands came to take the cure. Hotels lined Coleman Street near the public hot water fountain, a stretch people called bath-house row. After the Second World War, penicillin arrived and the cure business died. The bath houses closed or were torn down through the late sixties. Two revival attempts, one in the eighties and one in the nineties, both failed. The wells are still down there. At least three remain active. Hot mineral water can usually be had from a fountain outside the Chamber of Commerce, in a pavilion built in 1929.