The Ute people already knew what the water could do. Long before Glenwood Springs had a name, they used the underground vapor caves and hot springs at this river confluence for healing — oral histories marking the site as sacred. White settlers arrived, called the rough camp Defiance, and eventually platted a legal town in 1883. The springs didn't change, but what was built around them did. The Yampah Spring now feeds what is claimed to be the world's largest hot springs pool. Three subterranean rock chambers, geothermally heated to 125°F and carrying 34 minerals, still operate as a vapor spa. The Hotel Colorado — Italian Renaissance on the Colorado frontier — drew President Theodore Roosevelt for a bear-hunting expedition. The town that grew up fast and rough around sacred water became, in time, a place people traveled to on purpose.
