May 29th, 2005

photowhore

Tatham Springs Hotel, Part I

f you have been directed here by someone, this is Part I of a seven-part series about the Tatham Springs Hotel. I have retro-actively added links to all of the installments at the top of each entry, so that you can move between them without having to look them-up in the community archives. Additionally, this makes for bookmarking or making a memory of the entry a little more manageable. Feel free to leave comments, even if it is way past it's original posting dates. If you enjoyed it, I'd like to know. So, enjoy!

Part I   - The Exterior of the Hotel
Part II  - The Pool  & Bath Houses
Part III - The First Floor Interior, A
Part IV  - The First Floor Interior, B
Part V - The 2nd Floor Foyer, Hall, and Exterior
Part VI - The 2nd Floor Interior
Part VII - In search of the Tatham Spring
Part VIII - Epilogue, Tatham Springs: The Final Chapter

Part I - The Exterior of the Hotel


Sometimes you need go no further than your own backyard to have an adventure.


In northern Washington County Kentucky, near the town of Willisburg is the community of Tatham Springs.  It's about 10 miles from where I grew up.  I spent a summer working in a tobacco field just below the bridge that crosses one of the tributaries feeding the Chaplin River.  On the banks of the river stands the remains of the old Tatham Springs Hotel.  It is on the National Register of Historic Places and apparently is the subject of some haunting conjecture.  Information on the structure is scant, but it appears to have been built in the late 19th century around 1875, serving as a resort and health spa during the golden age of the mineral springs craze.  Later in its active life, it served as Kentucky's first statewide 4-H camp in the early part of the 20th century.  What follows is the only photo I could find online of the resort from its heyday.



As a child, I had seen it from a distance many times; from the windows of a school bus or from the tobacco field which sat in front of it.  Even then it looked forlorn and abandoned.  I had decided earlier in the year that when the weather was right, I wanted to take a personal field-trip to the old structure, if it was still standing, and document what remained before it was too late.  From the looks of things, and as I later would find out, I got there just in time.


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