James Longmire and the Healing Springs

In eighteen eighty three, a settler named James Longmire came down off the mountain and stumbled onto a meadow full of steaming mineral springs, ringed by ferns and evergreens. Longmire was already an old hand in this country. He had crossed the continent on the Oregon Trail some thirty years earlier, and in eighteen seventy he had helped the first climbing party on its way toward Rainier.

Now he saw opportunity bubbling out of the ground. He filed a mineral claim on the springs, cut a rough trail in, and built a small cabin. Local Native peoples had long believed the waters had curative powers, and Longmire agreed.

He and his family dug out the springs, sank tubs into the earth, and offered guests mineral baths, mud baths, and sulfur plunges. In the summer of eighteen ninety they opened the Longmire Springs Hotel, a modest two story building of split cedar with five little guest rooms upstairs and a lobby below, the first tourist inn on the mountain. That cluster of buildings grew into the community of Longmire, and the National Park Inn, built later, still welcomes travelers today.

Along with the old general store, it is now protected as part of the Longmire Historic District, the beating heart of the park's early history.