Pinkerton Hot Springs Rock Pile
by Priscilla Burgers
Title
Pinkerton Hot Springs Rock Pile
Artist
Priscilla Burgers
Medium
Photograph - Photography
Description
PINKERTON HOT SPRINGS ROCK PILE by PRISCILLA BURGERS
Hot springs are scattered across Colorado, but the Animas Valley's springs are unique in the way they are formed. There are fractures in the ground where water from snowmelt and rainfall move into the cracks and down toward the earth's core. The water travels thousands of feet underground and reaches a point where it can't travel any further. It then circulates back to the surface, dissolving rocks and creating a hot spring.
The Pinkerton water, which eventually empties into the rock pile past Hermosa on Highway 550, is all natural, but the rock pile was built by the Colorado Department of Transportation about 10 years ago to give it a safer place to discharge. The hot spring originally emptied on the west side of the highway and traveled down the ravine by the highway. CDOT built the rock pile on the east side of the highway with a pipe in the middle of it to stop the water from destroying vegetation on private property, The water's temperature at Pinkerton ranges between 95 and 105 degrees Fahrenheit.
Pinkerton has a history dating back to the early 1800s, when James Harvey Pinkerton turned the hot springs into a travel destination. Hot springs, including Pinkerton, were believed to have healing powers in the 1800's. People bathed in the springs, drank the water and looked for a cure to aches and pains and other ailments, Water from the spring was served in restaurants in 1892. James Pinkerton built a resort with a hotel and a swimming pool filled with the water. The hotel burned down three times, but Marilyn Monroe supposedly stayed at the resort before the hotel burned down for the last time. The resort occupied the space where Colorado Timberline Academy currently sits. The resort also served as a speakeasy (a place that illegally sold alcohol) during the prohibition in the 1920s.
THANK YOU TO THE ADMINISTRATORS OF THE FOLLOWING GROUPS FOR FEATURING THIS IMAGE:
HDR Photography Group - 10/2/2020
Uploaded
October 2nd, 2020
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