Too hot to manhandle
A little legend from my favorite hot springs
Someone bought Cottonwood Hot Springs earlier this year, and I am pissed. Not just because I didn’t have the opportunity to bid on the place, but because it appears to be owned now by ambitious, trend-savvy entrepreneurs.
Their Instagram account features beautiful, well-tattooed youth lounging in aquamarine water below the craggy canyon walls. They’re hosting live-music events, not months after a 30-something from the Western slope pitched my friend Adrienne and me on the idea while we were soaking in the pool known as the Belly.
“Do you know the owners?” he asked earnestly, after listing several musicians who would be so amazing for a poolside gig.
We didn’t.
“Well, could you say something to the guys in the office?” he said. “This place is perfect for it.”
Mason Jennings is playing Cottonwood October 10.
Cheers to you, fellow pool dude, if you made it happen, but I suspect it’s just the zeitgeist. Everything has to be a Thing now. But the pools do appear cleaner, and they’re always topped up.
The grounds are being groomed and in the online photos, the lodging rooms look cozy and refreshed.
A few years ago, some friends booked a getaway at the inn and were surprised to find out they were staying in a bunk room that hadn’t been updated in their kids’ lifetimes. More incentive to spend most of your time in the pools!
Also new this year: The aforementioned office guys are friendly every time.
Cottonwood’s previous owner, Cathy Manning, took over the resort in the mid ’80s, when it was known as the Jump Steady.
“The first time I saw the place, all the water was going into a horse trough,” she told Deborah Frazier George, author of Colorado’s Hot Springs. The buildings were rundown and the hot tubs used for soaking occasionally violated the state’s health standards. “I thought, ‘I can fix this.’”
Manning built five in-ground pools – the layout is meant to look like Buddha from the air, which is why you have the “Belly,” as well as the “Elbow” and the “Head.” Over the years, she added and subtracted typical hot-springs features: Watsu, Thai massage, teepee lodging. Today it has a creek-side cold plunge and a sauna, but the rabbits are long gone, along with the clothing-optional public hours.
I’ve never met Manning (and tried without luck to contact her for an interview), but the idea of her played some formative role in the character Wendy, in Up to Her Neck. Manning worked as a bartender in Denver before she bought the Jump Steady, and George’s description places her solidly in the canon of Western dreamers and impresarios:
“She can speak in New Age maxims, the hippie cosmic karma idioms, solid working-class terms, and marketing whiz bang–all with the voice of absolute look-you-in-the-eye truth.”
A couple winters ago, we went to soak at Cottonwood with our oldest daughter. Snow had melted in the rock and cement walkways, and we padded along shallow streams in the dark between pools. We were bobbing in the Head, one of the two warmest pools, when a man in work coveralls dragged an orange extension cord along the path beside us. He plugged the cord into a portable lantern and hung it from a metal pole, which he began to work on.
We sent Michael to ask what he was up to.
Working on the lights, he said.
On the one hand, surely permits were pulled, inspections called, fully grounded wiring installed.
On the other, I’d read somewhere that Manning had completed a lot of the work on the property through a barter system.
We returned to the office, where two young women were holding down the front desk. I explained our angst.
“He’s doing what?” asked one, getting out of her chair. She was out the back door before I finished my explanation. The other woman attached a note to our membership card explaining why she was issuing three credits.
We had purchased a package of twenty soaks. At that point in time, Cottonwood kept the cards in an alphabetized file, which was convenient because you didn’t need to worry about losing yours. For sentimental reasons, I still had the first membership card we’d purchased, back in the teens. It was pale blue and singed around the edges from a fire the previous year. That first summer had been magical, floating in the Belly under the stars. The front desk appeared to be run by a friendly couple, the man a double for Santa on holiday. We never saw him again.
We returned to soak a few days after the extension-cord incident. Another bearded guy, more like Backroad Truckers than Santa, was working the desk. He pulled out our card and glared at the note for a moment before looking at me.
“Next time, ask for the owner.”
“Okay,” I said. “Is she here now? I’m happy to talk to her.”
He slapped the card on the desk like I was too thick for words. “No. She’s never here.”
Legend, amirite?
Now that that era is over, I will miss some of its eccentricities. But if the new owners replace the women’s changing trailer, and its three layers of slightly springy, always damp flooring, I’ll never complain.
P. S. Truly, this is a great hot springs - I judge all others by Cottonwood - and the pools are open till midnight. Suits are required, but whining and phones are forbidden (cell service is terrible to nonexistent anyway).
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