Its hard to believe that anyone would want to live in this area let alone try to build a ranch or create a hot springs spa, but they did!
Daniels Ranch was located along the flood plain of the Rio Grande and is now where the campground is located. We crossed this land and then headed up the hills and across the top of Hot Springs Canyon. The wild desert country on limestone cliffs overlooked the river and Chisos and Dead Horse Mountains.
The trail was pretty rocky and rough and went up and down several times so I had to watch where I was going most of the time. The nice part about that is that I saw so many lovely flowering plants like purple desert primrose, desert verbena, yellow brittle brush, monkey flower, Mexican gold poppy, dog weed and desert rock nettle.
The hot springs were discovered by J.O. Langford who had malaria and was convinced that bathing and drinking the mineral water cured him. He decided to build a bathhouse over the springs and market it as a healing hot springs. But after three years he had to abandon his spring due to the Mexican Revolution and no customers. Fourteen years later he returned and developed the spring with a motor court, post office, and general store. In 1942 the park purchased the property. All that is left is the foundation of the bath house where one can sit and enjoy the hot water while watching the Rio splash past.
We made the mistake of hiking to the trailhead from the RV which turned out to be more than a mile so we ended up hiking over 8 miles. It was a strenuous hike and about did us in. That’s 3 hikes in 3 days. No more hiking for us the next few days.
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