Berkeley Springs State Park Overview & History
Park Overview
Located in the center of historic Berkeley Springs, Berkeley Springs State Park is home to a mineral spa that has been in use since colonial times. The park is renowned for its warm spring water, which flows at a constant temperature of 74.3 degrees and historically attracted the nation’s very first president to the area. The park’s Old Roman and Main bathhouses offer a wide selection of spa services, including massages, saunas, baths and showers.
Park History
Berkeley Springs State Park is located in the center of Berkeley Springs, W.V. Long before the first Europeans discovered the warm waters of Berkeley Springs, it was already a famous health mecca, which attracted Indigenous People everywhere from the St. Lawrence Seaway in Canada and the Great Lakes to the Carolinas. Those first settlers, who came in 1730, learned the uses and value of the springs from the Native Americans and brought greater awareness to it throughout the settlements of the east.
Perhaps the most notable and influential advocate of the curative powers of the springs was George Washington, who, at 16, visited them as a member of a survey party. As the party, which was surveying the western limits of Thomas Lord Fairfax’s lands, camped there for the night, young Washington noted in his diary, “March 18th, 1748, We this day called to see Ye Fam’d Warm Springs.” For many years afterward, George Washington visited the springs regularly, and it was largely through his efforts that its fame as a health spa grew throughout the colonies. At the urging of the Colony of Virginia and in the public interest, Lord Fairfax conveyed his land holdings at the springs and fifty adjacent acres to the Colony of Virginia in 1776. Shortly thereafter, the land was offered for public sale.
George Washington, three signers of the Declaration of Independence, four signers of the Constitution, seven members of the Continental Congress and five Revolutionary generals were among the prominent colonists who made initial purchases there. Hence, the springs’ reputation as a health resort became firmly established.
Borrowing the name of a famous counterpart in England, the General Assembly of Virginia formed the town of Bath on this location in 1776 and created a board of trustees to govern the new town. James Rumsey, who later invented the first successful steamboat, was then contracted to construct five bathhouses and several other public buildings. This officially established the springs as a resort facility.
The bathhouse first opened in 1930. Since then, thousands have enjoyed the variety of baths and treatments in the warm mineral waters that flow from the springs at a constant temperature of 74.3 degrees Fahrenheit. The springs discharge from five principal sources and numerous lesser ones, all within a hundred yards, approximately 2,000 gallons of clear, sparkling water per minute.
