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Historic place

Warm Springs Plunge (Wasatch Springs Plunge)

840 N Beck St, Salt Lake City, UT

Brigham Young dedicated a bathhouse here over hot springs in 1850; the 1921 plunge became a children's museum and then sat empty.

📅 1921–1976🏛️ OtherClosed
Open on the mapSlide back to 1921

The story

People used these warm, sulfurous springs long before the pioneers did; Shoshones, Utes and Paiutes soaked there on hunting trips. In 1850 pioneers built an adobe social hall over the springs, with an indoor pool for women and an outdoor swimming hole for men. Brigham Young dedicated it, and it became the city's first public dance hall.

Salt Lake City built the current Mission-style building in 1921 as the Warm Springs Municipal Bath, and it became the Warm Springs Plunge in 1932 to draw summer crowds. In 1946 sanitation concerns led the city to cap the hot springs and switch to a chlorinated pool. It closed in 1976 for lack of visitors, and the Children's Museum of Utah moved in from the early 1980s until 2006. Staff stored filing cabinets in the drained pools, and the director's office had a leftover bathhouse shower.

What's There Now

A mostly vacant building with deteriorating roof tiles and facade; a model railroad club uses part of it.

Everything that was here

Did you know?

Pioneer Thomas Bullock helped dig the first pool and claimed the water could heal all who bathe.
The building was listed on the National Register in 1980.
Nearby Warm Springs Park still has warm water.

Nearby history

Union Pacific Depot

400 W South Temple · 2.5 km away
The depot's grand hall carries a 1909 mural of the golden spike, and it ended up as a nightclub and then a hotel.

Joseph Smith Memorial Building

15 E South Temple · 2.5 km away
Renamed and dedicated in 1993 as an LDS church office building and community center after the hotel closed.

ZCMI Center Mall

15 S Main Street · 2.6 km away
A Gruen Associates mall on the block bounded by Main, South Temple, State and 100 South; retail closed July 28, 2007.

Alta Club

100 E South Temple · 2.7 km away
Founded in 1883 as a social club that kept Mormons out, it bought two slot machines in 1936 to pay the bills.

Calvin L. Rampton Salt Palace Convention Center

100 S West Temple · 2.7 km away
Opened February 1996 on the demolished arena's site at 100 S West Temple.

Salt Lake Theatre

75 E 100 S · 2.8 km away
Brigham Young called himself designer and general dictator of a 1,500-seat theatre that took months to knock down.

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Sourceshttps://utahhistoricalmarkers.org/c/slc/wasatch-springs-plunge/