Fred Evans made his money hauling freight into the Black Hills, running an outfit that at its height employed something like a thousand men and well over a thousand oxen and mules, and he spent it turning a warm creek into a resort town. In the autumn of 1881 he was one of five men who formed the Hot Springs Town Site Company, aiming at the seventy five or so warm mineral springs in the valley. He became president of the successor company in 1886 and its superintendent by 1887, when Iowa investors took control. Two railroads arrived within a year of each other, in September 1890 and July 1891, and shared a sandstone depot. The town voted itself into existence in August 1890, 127 in favour. What Evans left is visible in the building stone. He quarried the local pink sandstone, got the railroad to run a spur out to it, and between about 1882 and 1893 the town put up a Romanesque courthouse, a city hall and a school in it. He gave the land for the Fall River County Courthouse of 1891 and won the contract to build it for twenty three thousand dollars. Evans Plunge, a warm water pool about seventy feet by two hundred over a gravel bottom, opened on 22 May 1891 with admission free. The hotel he built to replace one that burned opened in August 1892. He died at Hot Springs in 1902.
Getting there
43.4392, -103.4803
Locations are approximate and may be inaccurate, on private land, or otherwise inaccessible. Check before you travel.
Hear it from the road
Whistlestop tells you this story automatically when you drive past. No searching, no tapping, nothing to ask.
