Symes Hotel

By editor

Hot Springs, Sanders County, Montana, August 2022

The Little Bitterroot River Valley was a fine place to live long before anyone thought to put a hotel there. The native peoples enjoyed the healing hot springs for generations, which was a sensible arrangement until the government decided in 1855 to set aside an 80-acre reserve around the springs, presumably to protect them from the people who had been using them perfectly well all along. In 1910, the Flathead Reservation was opened to homesteading, and the town of Hot Springs—originally platted as Pineville—sprang up to cater to visitors seeking the curative mineral waters.

Businessman Fred Symes looked at the hot water bubbling out of the ground and saw an opportunity. In 1929, he built a $50,000 Mission-style hotel, complete with a curvilinear roofline, quatrefoil windows, and stuccoed walls. It opened in early 1930 with twenty baths, ivory enamel finishings, and doctors on the premises to assure the guests that the water was doing them some good. The Symes proved to be a depression-proof business, expanding throughout the 1930s and 1940s while the rest of the country was trying to figure out how to pay for its next meal.

The popularity of hot springs waned in the 1950s, and the town's population dropped from 5,000 to 411 by 1990. But the Symes Hotel endured. Under new ownership and in partnership with the Hot Springs Artists Society, it has found a new life hosting local events. It stands today as a monument to the enduring appeal of hot water, and a reminder that a good soak is sometimes the best medicine a person can get.

See also

• Symes Hotel at Hot Springs, Sanders County (Montana Historical Society)
• [Hot Springs, Montana] for more on the town's history and mineral waters