Kristine Bretall, Wood River Museum Community Engagement Manager
School’s out for summer! For many across the country, swimming only happened in the summer time, but here in Ketchum, Bald Mountain Hot Springs was a year-round fixture on the south end of Main Street in Ketchum from 1927 until the late 1990s. Hot springs were the very first tourist attraction in the Wood River Valley and in the late 1880s in Ketchum, near the Warm Springs base of Baldy, Guyer Hot Springs was built and featured a hotel, a spring fed hot pool, tennis courts and a bandstand. But by the early 1900s, the distance from town and time had taken their toll on the place, and entrepreneur Carl Brandt bought the hotel and springs in 1927.
Deciding that the future of the hot water lay in Ketchum, Brandt piped the hot water all along Warm Springs Road in wooden pipes to the corner of South Main and 1st Streets, to create a hot springs pool right in town (where the Limelight Hotel is now located). Hired for the project was the renowned Boise-based architecture firm, Tourtellotte and Hummel, who in Boise designed the Idaho State House, the Egyptian Theater, the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist, and Boise Junior High.
The original design for the hot springs pool and lodge included a covered pool, rustic looking tourist cabins, and an elaborate, luxury two-story hotel with an enormous stone fireplace. However, with the Crash of 1929, instead of the full plan coming to fruition, Brandt scaled the project and built the pool without the cover, but surrounded by a full rectangular building that contained offices and changing rooms, and surrounding the pool building in a three-sided “U”, was a one-story motor lodge catering to the growing number of tourists traveling in their own cars.
In 1935, Averell Harriman’s scout Count Felix von Schaffgotsch stayed here on his final stop of his search of Western states for the perfect place on the Union Pacific’s spur train lines to build a ski area. The hot springs pool flourished for decades and was a focal point of most kids’ youth in Ketchum. Kids learned to swim there, adults had parties and even “Aqua-Cades” in the 1950s and 1960s that featured synchronized swimming and diving, and a lot of clowning around.
By the late 1990s, however, the wooden pipes and other equipment was failing and the site was sold. The motor lodge was moved to a private hunting ranch in Hagerman in the early 2000s and the sign for Bald Mountain Hot Springs now hangs in lounge at the Limelight Hotel.
Note this story was originally published in June of 2025 in the Idaho Mountain Express.
