Mount Clemens, Michigan

Christian Clemens surveyed this site in seventeen ninety-five, settled four years later, and gave the town his name. Mount Clemens became the Macomb County seat in eighteen eighteen. But what put it on the map was an accident: attempts to drill salt wells in the eighteen seventies struck sulfurous mineral springs instead.

The first bathhouse opened in eighteen seventy-three, and over the next century, Mount Clemens became one of the most famous health resort cities in North America. Twenty-three hotels and bathhouses operated at the peak of the spa era, drawing Clark Gable, Mae West, Babe Ruth, Jack Dempsey, William Randolph Hearst, and the Vanderbilt family. The mineral bath industry ran for about a century, fading after the Second World War.