Trouble With Healing Waters
The Turbulent History of Buckhorn Springs
by Roger Love (reprinted from Table Rock Sentinel July 1988)

For what ails you, you can still seek a cure at Buckhorn Mineral Springs.  The owners might even let you make your way across the wooden bridge to the mineral water gazebo where you may grab a paper cup and draw a drink of the water from the old hand pump.  You might even want to take a carbon dioxide "vapor bath" in the bathhouse next to the well.

More than 150 years ago the Klamath and the Rogue River Indians did just this to cure their sick, although without such "modern" conveniences as hand pumps and bathhouses.  And 100 years ago, white Rogue Valley residents also discovered the curative properties of the springs.  Even as late as 1962, a local chiropractor maintained a sanitarium at Buckhorn Springs for patients perhaps not entirely convinced of the value of more modern medical treatment.

Today, Buckhorn's reputation as a health spa may be as decayed as the buildings which once housed the sanitarium, but it remains a centerpiece of sorts in the history of southern Oregon's soda and mineral water springs.  We see in Buckhorn the development and use of the springs.  We see a story about ourselves.

No one knows when or how the Indians found the springs. Maybe it was all the dead insects and animals bunched around a depression in the ground next to the creek.  Or maybe it was the bubbles rising mysteriously from the creek bottom.  We do know that the Indians in southern Oregon considered Buckhorn Springs more than any other mineral springs in the area to be sacred for its water's medicinal properties. (1)  

Buckhorn Springs, located about ten miles southeast of Ashland on Emigrant Creek, is one of many soda or mineral springs in Oregon.  At these springs, naturally occurring carbon dioxide gas escapes from the ground, mingling at varying degrees of concentration with spring water to create natural carbonation.  The water at Buckhorn, though, is not highly carbonated like that at nearby Wagner's Soda Springs.  As a result, Buckhorn's mineral water was prized less for its taste an more for its therapeutic value as a bathing water.  The source of carbon dioxide at Buckhorn is thought to be volcanic, as it is with most mineral springs.  Two major faults intersect near the springs area. (2)

The free gas discharge at Buckhorn is constant and often is more vigorous than any other known site in the state. (3)  Carbon Dioxide is a colorless, inert, tasteless, nonflammable gas.  Commonly used in fire extinguishers and refrigeration systems, carbon dioxide in its solid state, forms dry ice. In fact, at several spots near Buckhorn Springs, a company called Gas-Ice produced dry ice from the gas coming from within the earth.  There was an attempt to do the same at Buckhorn, but when the well reached 300 feet and struck a good pocket of carbon dioxide, the drillers decided to go a bit deeper to achieve an even greater volume of carbon dioxide.  Instead they hit water, dooming the project.

Being heavier than air, carbon dioxide tends to collect in depressions in the ground and displaces all the oxygen if it is not dissipated into the atmosphere by a breeze.  Thus, when an animal or insect encounters such a pocket of gas, it cannot breathe and will die quickly unless it is able to escape.

This phenomenon probably explains how the Indians discovered the spot we know as Buckhorn Mineral Springs today.  Insects and animals would blunder into these pockets of carbon dioxide. Most would react quickly enough to escape the dense, unbreathable gas, but some would die by asphyxiation.  Even today, one can find dead birds and motionless butterflies next to the vapor baths along the bank of Emigrant Creek.  Certainly, hundreds of years ago, passing Indians noticed this too. Following the creeks, white trappers came across the remains of these unfortunate birds, rabbits and squirrels.  But they wrongly assumed the animals had stopped for a drink and had been poisoned by something in the water.  As a result, many mineral and soda springs, especially Buckhorn, came to be known as "poison waters" to the whites. (4)

The Indians reacted differently. Perhaps because their culture tended to explain nature in mystical terms rather than scientific terms, the Indians did not immediately assume the animals they saw sprawled in the carbon dioxide had been poisoned. They saw this, instead, as a manifestation of the "Great Spirit," and thus assigned to these places a great healing power. (5)

The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries found several tribes of Indians living in southern Oregon, among them the Rogue or Dagelima Indians, in whose territory most of the mineral springs lay, Buckhorn included.  East of the Cascade Range, in the country known as the "Land of Many Lakes," lived the Klamath and Modoc tribes.  All three tribes were often in conflict with each other, at least until the mid-nineteenth century when the Rogue Indian Wars greatly depleted that tribe's numbers.  Despite their history of intertribal conflict, however, the tribes did agree on one thing: the use of he mineral springs.   

It is not known just how much use the Rogues made of the springs, but we do know quite a bit about the Klamath Tribe's reverence for Buckhorn.  A man named C.B. Watson, writing in a 1914 edition of the Ashland Tidings, seems to be the source for nearly all the material written about the Indian's use of Buckhorn Springs. Upon hearing stories about their belief in the springs' healing powers, he visited them in 1870.

-

Settlers soon displaced the Native Americans and also discovered the natural rewards of Buckhorn Springs. Through the 1930's and 40's, southern Oregonians enjoyed camping at the site in woody surroundings or in later-erected cabins. 

-

The Indians prized the escaping gas as "Hi-U-Skookum Medicine," or breath of the "Great Spirit."  This medicine, they felt, was a guarantee or a sure cure if the patient had lived a worthy life.  If the patient died, it was obvious he or she did not deserve to live.  Why the Klamaths and Modocs exclusively used Buckhorn Springs is not really clear, although, Frank Riddle, a white man who lived with the Klamath Tribe, told Watson their right to use Buckhorn and no other had been granted by treaty. (6)

There is no question the Indians considered Buckhorn to be sacred - and effective.  It was not unusual for them to strap an ailing tribal member to a pony and haul him or her across the Cascade Mountains from their own home in the Klamath Basin, a trip that was more dangerous than it might appear.  Even though the Modocs, the Klamaths and the Rogues agreed to the sacredness of the springs, and by treaty would not attack each other during their stay at the springs, the pilgrims, as they were called, remained fair game for surprise attack while travelling to and from the locality.   

Once safely at Buckhorn, the first phase of treatment was simple.  The medicine man who supervised the springs would find a place where the gas escaped, dig out a depression large enough to accommodate a person, spread out some tree boughs for a bed, then place the patient on the boughs, submerging him or her in the carbon dioxide.  The patient would remain there, watched carefully, until he or she passed out. 

Thus, under the influence of the "Great Spirit," the person would be removed from the hollowed-out ground and taken to a "wickiup," a structure made of skins and boughs, where, according to Watson, the patient would undergo a "course of manipulation" until regaining consciousness.  A spell in the sweat house followed, while the patient listened to the medicine man's incantations, drank mineral water and breathed its steam in the primitive sauna.  This treatment would continue until the patient was either cured or declared incurable.

If performed properly, the Indians insisted this seemingly harsh treatment seldom failed to cure even the most serious cases of rheumatism, asthma, kidney disease and stomach trouble - if, of course, the patient was worthy of the cure.  In essence, the Indian would be confronting his or her fate with the Great Spirit.

Of course, the curative powers of Oregon's mineral springs among the Indians did not go unnoticed by the white population, which increased sharply over the last half of the nineteenth century.  And even though many whites may have scoffed at much of what the Indians held sacred, they did take pragmatic notice of any practice that might improve either their health or their pocketbooks.  The mineral springs scattered about Oregon seemed to be among those items. In 1910, the Southern Pacific Railroad crudely echoed this sentiment in a brochure,

Many of the medicinal springs of Oregon have a record of centuries of healing among the Indians, who, like the lower animals, instinctively discover true nature remedies for he ills that overtake them. (7)  

Putting the fears of "poison waters" aside, it was not long before white entrepeneurs began offering their own brand of "Hi-U-Skookum Medicine" to those settlers who could find no relief for their ailments elsewhere, medicinal science being what it was at that time.

[Home]  [About Buckhorn]  [Facilities]  [Food at Buckhorn]  [Upcoming Events/Retreats]  [Booking]
[Location]   [Our History]  [Buckhorn Mineral Springs]  [Geology]  [Wildlife]  [Links]  [Contact Us]

Copyright© 1999 Buckhorn Springs