Sol Duc Hot Springs

Sol Duc is a Native American work for "sparkling water". In the 1880's Theodore Moritz nursed a native with a broken leg back to health. In gratitude, the Indian told Moritz of the "firechuck" or magic waters. Moritz staked a claim, built cedar log tubs and soon people were coming great distances to drink and bathe in the healing water.

Michael Earles, the owner of Puget Sound Mills and Timber Company claimed he was cured of a fatal illness after visiting Sol Duc. When Moritz died in 1909, Earles bought the land from his heirs and built a $75,000 road to the springs from Lake Crescent. Three years later, on May 15, 1912, an elegant hotel opened.

The grounds were immaculate - landscaping, golf links, tennis courts, croquet grounds, bowling alleys, theatre, and card rooms. A three-story building between the bath house and hotel held the sanitarium. With beds for one hundred patients, a laboratory, and x-ray it was considered one of the finest in the West.

Four years later in 1916, sparks from a defective chimney flue ignited the shake cedar shingling on the hotel roof. The water had not yet been turned on as it was early in the season. Wires were short-circuited on the organ and Beethoven's "Funeral March" began to plan as the hotel was consumed in the flames in just three hours.

The resort of today may be more modest than the one that existed in the early 1900's, but people enjoy the "hot tears" of the Sol Duc dragon.