Man looks for buried treasure in some unusual places

Wilcox Mineral Springs

Oftentimes while looking through old newspapers, I find the advertisements just as interesting as the stories the newspaper contains. One example of this is a large ad for the Wilcox Mineral Springs and Hotel that was published on the front page of the July 16, 1903 edition of The Monroe Journal.

This resort was located in the Schuster community, a few miles north of the Monroe-Wilcox County line, near McWilliams. Located along the Louisville & Nashville Railroad, the resort had opened a new hotel with comfortable rooms and supplied with the best food “the market affords.” Best of all, the resort boasted of no malaria and no mosquitoes.

Visitors were encouraged to drink and swim in the waters of the resort’s four natural mineral springs, which had been tested and found to contain sodium chloride, sodium sulphate, sodium bicarbonate, potassium, magnesium, calcium, iron and silica. At the time, it was believed that these curative waters would heal all sorts of maladies, including liver, kidney and stomach troubles. The ad in The Journal let readers know that “a number of remarkable cures have already been effected after surprisingly brief use of waters, as testimonials abundantly show.”

Operated by George W. Stewart, individual guests could stay at the hotel for $25 a month or $7 per week. Special rates were given to families. Those arriving by train were met by a free hack, that is, a sturdy, horse-drawn wagon that was commonly used as a taxi or for mail delivery in the 1800s.

The resort thrived for a time, but the crowds eventually began to thin, and the business took a major hit after one of the hotel buildings burned in 1908 followed by other fires that destroyed the bandstand and dance pavilion. If you go to the site today, you might find a few crumbling foundations if you know where to look.

On a sidenote, several years ago a young man from Georgia called me from out of the blue asking if I knew exactly where the resort was located. He was a bottle and antique collector and specialized in searching old locations like Wilcox Mineral Springs. Once at the location, he knew how to locate old privy sites and would dig down into them looking for old bottles and such.

I asked him if he wasn’t afraid of digging in those old outhouses, and he laughed. He said after so many years, the contents of the privy eventually became normal soil and that it was as safe as digging anywhere else. I told him I didn’t think I’d want to put it to the test.

I asked him if he ever found anything valuable, and his answer was surprising. He said that people threw all sorts of things into outhouses, and he’d found countless bottles and broken glassware. He said that he’d even found a bottle so rare that he’d sold it for big money on eBay to some prince in Saudi Arabia.

In the end, I told the man what I knew about Wilcox Mineral Springs, including that it was no doubt on private property. I don’t know if he ever tracked down the current owner of the site or if he made a trip there to search for old bottles. But if he did, I hope he found something that made it worth the effort.