El Paso de Robles: The Pass of the Oaks and Its Hot Springs
Near Paso Robles, California
El Paso de Robles means the Pass of the Oaks, and those oaks still shade the town today. But the deeper draw was underground. For thousands of years, hot mineral water bubbled up from natural sulphur springs here, and the Salinan people who lived along the Salinas River knew these waters as a place of healing.
When the Franciscan padres from nearby Mission San Miguel arrived, they too soaked in the springs of comfort. In eighteen fifty-seven, the Mexican land grant known as Rancho Paso de Robles was purchased by brothers James and Daniel Blackburn, together with Lazarus Godchaux. Drury Woodson James, a Kentucky cattleman, later acquired an interest in the property.
These men had a vision: to turn the steaming springs into a health resort that would rival the great spa towns of Europe. They advertised El Paso de Robles Hot and Cold Sulphur Springs and, boldly, the Only Natural Mud Baths in the World. An early hotel opened beside the springs, and visitors came first by stagecoach, then by rail, seeking relief from rheumatism, arthritis, and the aches of frontier life.
In eighteen eighty-eight, a bathhouse with thirty-seven rooms was raised directly over the hot sulphur springs, complete with a plunge pool. The following year, work began on the grand Hot Springs Hotel, later known as the Paso Robles Inn. By the eighteen nineties, the resort was extravagant for its time, offering a seven-acre garden, a nine-hole golf course, a library, a beauty salon, and a hot springs plunge considered among the finest in the United States.
Presidents, prizefighters, and opera stars all came to soak. Then, in nineteen forty, disaster struck. The old wooden hotel burned to the ground.
But the community rebuilt, salvaging bricks from the ruins to raise the mission-style building that still anchors downtown today. Beneath its garden, the hot springs never stopped flowing. Modern guest rooms still tap that same warm sulphur water, a living link to the reason this town exists at all.
When you drive into Paso Robles, remember: you are entering the Pass of the Oaks, a town built quite literally on hot water.
