Okawville: Illinois's Mineral Spring Town

The village of Okawville in Washington County takes its name from the Kaskaskia River, once called the Okaw by French traders. German settlers laid out the town in the eighteen thirties, but what put Okawville on the map was what came up from the ground in eighteen sixty-seven. That year, Rudolph Plegge noticed the water in his well smelled of sulfur and magnesium.

He and a neighbor built a bathhouse, and within a generation Okawville had become one of Illinois's leading resort destinations. Wealthy St. Louis businessmen, including brewing magnate August Anheuser Busch Senior, made the trip out for the waters.

After the original bathhouse burned in eighteen ninety-two, a Victorian hotel and bathhouse was built to replace it. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in nineteen seventy-eight and still operates as the Original Springs Hotel today, the last surviving mineral spa of its kind in Illinois.