Talk
FaCeS
wellspring of
HiSTorY
A Great-Grandson’s Tales Of The Fabled Murrieta Hot Springs Resort,
And The Visionary Who Built It, Become Preserved In Print by sandra shrader
s emotional connections to
A
places go, Tony Guenther’s
affection for the Murrieta
Valley is as warm as the
mineral waters that
flow beneath the modern-day city’s
bustling surface.
So when the descendent of Murrieta’s
legendary Hot Springs Resort’s founder Fritz
Guenther was asked by Arcadia Publishing
to co-author Murrieta Hot Springs—a new
book about the Springs’ history—he was
thrilled to see the old stories come bubbling
back up into the present.
“My great-grandfather Fritz Guenther was
born in Germany around 1848, and after
PH
he lived in New York, Chicago, Virginia
o
T
City and Los Angeles, he visited Murrieta
o
S
f
in 1902 because he had heard about the
rom “murri
mineral springs there,” explained Tony via
phone from his Newport Beach residence.
ET
“At that time, all acreage around the hot
A
Ho
springs was just vast rolling hills, the springs
T
S
P
were more like mud holes, and there were
ring
just a couple of tents there. But Fritz was
S
” Cour
an enterprising guy—he had owned three
saloons at various times in Los Angeles—
TES
y of Ar
and he remembered the popularity of the the Path from cripple
Baden-Baden hot springs area in Germany.
creek to kidney
C
springs. Photo
A
di
So he decided to purchase the property, and postcard from 1913. A
Pu
brought his family there.”
opposite Page: girls
at the pool circa the
B
li
1940’s/1950s. (vbv)
SH
ing
46 DeceMBeR l MYUNDeRTHeSUN.cOM
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