The mineral spring that built a resort, named a town, and disappeared — until its community fought to bring it back.

An interactive history in ten chapters

For two centuries, a mineral spring in the South Carolina Upstate drew Cherokee hunters, antebellum planters, Gilded Age tourists, and neighborhood kids on summer Saturdays. It burned three times, flooded once, and sat behind a fence for a generation. In 2024, the community bought it back.

This is that story — told through the deeds, diaries, photographs, and newspaper clippings that survived.

Ten chapters · Two centuries

Pre-contact – 1839

Before the Doctor

A mineral spring known to Cherokee and documented by three published authorities before Dr. Chick ever arrived.

1840 – 1862

The Resort Era

Dr. Chick builds one of the Upstate’s first destination resorts — a gathering place where two very different worlds meet at one spring.

1861 – 1903

War, Railroad, and a Name That Moved

The hotel burns. The railroad arrives. Every institution migrates from the Springs to the Station, and a mineral spring loses its gravitational pull.

1903 – 1907

Bull’s Grand Hotel

J.A. Bull transforms a 16-room inn into a 119-room resort with orchestra, telephone, and New York papers by evening post. Four thousand guests in a single season.

1907 – 1932

Three Hotels, a Military Academy, and a Hospital

The hotel burns again. What follows is a rapid-fire cycle of reinvention—a replacement hotel, a ginger ale company, a military academy, a sanitarium—each one smaller than the last.

1924 – 1940

Amusement Park and the Flood

The Bull family returns to Chick Springs. A 350-foot swimming pool, a ballroom, competing orchestras—and then the state builds a highway through the property and floods it all.

1940s – c. 1975

The Pool

For a generation, Chick Springs meant one thing: the swimming pool. Tin slide, jukebox, shag floor, and spring-fed water so cold it made you gasp. It was also segregated.

1975 – 2005

Behind the Fence

The pool drains. The marker is stolen. The property sits in private hands, increasingly overgrown, increasingly forgotten. A generation grows up in Taylors without knowing what Chick Springs was.

2005 – 2024

The Fight to Come Back

Nearly twenty years of persistence by a loose network of historians, conservationists, and civic leaders who refused to let the place disappear.

2024 – present

The Spring Still Flows

Eight and a half acres. Eighty-five thousand dollars. And then a hurricane destroyed the last standing historic structure. The restoration is underway.

The water still flows.

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