The Broadwater Natatorium: Helena's Vanished Resort
Near Helena, Montana
Colonel Charles Broadwater built one of the most spectacular resort complexes in the American West on the western edge of Helena in eighteen eighty-nine. The Broadwater Hotel and Natatorium drew on the natural hot springs of the valley and offered guests a swimming pavilion described at the time as the largest indoor pool in the world, enclosed in a Moorish-style structure with elaborate tiles and ironwork. Presidents, senators, and railroad magnates came to take the waters.
Broadwater died in eighteen ninety-two and the hotel declined quickly without him. The natatorium was damaged in the nineteen thirty-five earthquake, closed in nineteen forty-one, and the complex was demolished in nineteen seventy-six. Nothing stands on the original site today except a residential neighborhood, but photographs in the Montana Historical Society archive show a lost building of genuine grandeur.
