When I was quite young my father would drive us up to San Antonio, where we would stay in the Hot Wells Tourist Court. Here's the old DeSoto at the entrance, Mom inside waiting for Dad to take the picture, back in 1933.
In later years we stayed at the Alamo Court on Broadway, near to Breckenridge Park and the zoo. The Hot Wells Tourist Court hangs on, in the fringes of my memory.
An artesian well drilled near the river once gushed thousands of gallons a day, hot sulphur water. A resort soon sprang up to take advantages of the healing properties of the warm, foul-tasting waters. Hot Springs went through several iterations of health spas and resort hotels. Devastating fires would destroy one hotel and another would arise. In the time of my childhood tourist cabins surrounded the ruins of the final attempt at a hotel complex.
That hot sulphur water released into the San Antonio River soon gave birth to an extensive bed of freshwater mussels, downstream from Hot Wells. When a youngster looking for fish bait cracked open a mussel, he discovered a large pearl. Almost immediately a bonanza was born, a "pearl rush." Word was that New York jewelers would pay fantastic prices for the pearls. San Antonians panned the muck for the valuable mussels.
It didn't last long. The mussels were all grubbed out, their shells littering the banks. According to historian Char Miller there were "sporatic revivals" of the pearl harvesting, but nothing like the original extensive mussel beds.
Here's an opportunity for Professor Dac to say something about the over-exploitation of natural resources. Professor Miller makes that point for me in "On the Border. An Environmental History of San Antonio."
Tourist courts were fun. When we were young.
Dac Crossley
June 4, 2011
"The sentimentalist ages far more quickly that the person who loves his work and enjoys new challenges." - Lillie Langtry.
The local motel had the only drive-in eatery in my home town. It was where we met our friends.
Freshman in college, someone asked me, "What did you do last night?"
"I went to the motel." A great conversation stopper.
Love the pearl harvest history.
Posted by: irene black | June 06, 2011 at 04:23 PM
Hi, Dac--fun? For us, tourist courts were our homes on occassion. My daddy got a job with an oil co. in the 40s, so that meant the five of us followed the oil business for several years. Everything we owned was in the trunk of the 1940 Ford. When I was ten, my mother told daddy to build her a house because she wasn't dragging three little girls around anymore.
Oh, we lived in many peculiar places. I remember tourists courts, the five of us in one room. But you know--God protects the young, so only my parents and my older sister knew this was not a good way to live.
I still see old tourists courts between here and Levelland/Lubbock.
I always stare of the run-down places as long as I can, studying them, remembering.
I did not know mussels were harvested in the SA River. That's a new one.
But that's why history is so much fun!
Celia
Posted by: Celia Yeary | June 05, 2011 at 07:53 AM