During the late 1800s cities across the upper Midwest were transitioning from lumbering to industry and agriculture. What many people do not know is that there was another alternative: the recreational “spa” town. At a time when America was developing into a powerful industrial nation, Americans were also going back to nature and including health and exercise into their daily routine.

Since conventional cures for many chronic diseases, such as tuberculosis, did not exist, sanitariums provided palliative therapies that included relaxation and carefully tailored exercises in a rural, pastoral environment. In an era where antibiotics were unknown and aspirin was a new experimental drug, these therapies offered hope that the symptoms of a disease could be alleviated even it if it could not be cured. In the late nineteenth century, America’s sanitariums became famous tourist spots, where the affluent and not-so-affluent alike could come to be pampered.

In Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, a resident and influential entrepreneur and former politician by the name of Thaddeus Pound had a dream in the 1890s to build a sanitarium in his hometown. Pound’s plans for a sanitarium were different than the traditional American idea because he wanted the main selling point of the sanitarium to be the Chippewa Spring and its pure, mineral water. Since the Roman times, mineral waters from deep springs were believed to have special, curative powers, and by the nineteenth century a number of European “spa” towns – such as Vichy, France and Bath, England – had become international meccas for those who believed that by “taking the waters” they would find relief for their ailments. Pound wanted to import this European idea and combine it with a modern American sanitarium and thereby create a new future for Chippewa Falls. As a past owner of the now defunct Union Lumber Company, Pound knew that the lumber era was nearly over, and he believed that the Chippewa Spring was the ideal vehicle for transforming Chippewa Falls from Saw Dust to Spa Town. Thaddeus Pound envisioned that the spring water from the Chippewa Spring had the identity to shape Chippewa Falls into a pure water town.

Would the city of Chippewa Falls become a city of industry, with textile mills and shoe factories? Or would the town take advantage of its clear water and pastoral scenery to become a recreational Mecca for vacationers and those seeking a restful “Cure” from the fast pace of urban life?

This exhibit will explore Thaddeus Pound and his efforts to try to turn Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin into something far from what it is today. . In the end, the future for Chippewa Falls would lie in new industries and Pound’s dream would never become a reality. But at an important juncture in the town’s history, Pound’s vision represented a real and different dream for the community of Chippewa Falls.

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Sanitarium photo on center of page: Courtesy of The Chippewa Historic Society