According to one account, "Indians" used the springs to clean off sheep prior to shearing. According to another, the
Cahuilla peoples slept in the springs in winter, up to their necks, to keep warm at night. The Branch family began homesteading the property, partially acquired from the Southern Pacific railroad, in 1880 or 1881. The springs resort could be reached via the
Beaumont station of the
Southern Pacific line, and then via an omnibus the remaining to the springs. of Relief Hot Springs, 1907 In 1913, the property was sold for $53,000 ($ today) to three brothers: William Earl Gilman (and his wife Josephine), Grant Gilman, and Forest Gilman. They were natives of
Topeka, Kansas, and William E. Gilman had previously owned a hotel in
Ocean Park that had burned in 1912. The original hotel reportedly had just five rooms. In 1913 the Gilman brothers built a bathhouse and a spring-fed swimming pool was built the following year. Later, the pool was expanded to an Olympic size. The resort was said to have a "frame hotel and cottages and tents forming a little settlement in a grove adjacent to the springs. Besides the usual tub baths there are mud baths that use material from the
tule marsh". In 1930, visitors could get to Gilman's Hot Springs by either taking the
Pacific Electric to Riverside and there connecting with a Motor Transit stage, or by taking a
Santa Fe Railway train to
San Jacinto, where an auto stage would then ferry them to the springs resort. A San Bernardino newspaper columnist later recalled the early years of the resort: "As a youth I used to hunt quail and rabbits along the San Jacinto River and, of course, always retired to Gilman's, where even in those days, there was a lunch counter which did, as I remember, a thriving business. Then, sometime later, my father was a patient at the resort, taking the spring water and mud baths, for a rheumatic condition. I frequently visited him there. He occupied one of the one-room houses, a tiny place. In those days, nobody ever heard of golf, but the buggies and rigs of all types jammed the grounds of the springs." Other activities for visitors included hiking in the hills and walks within the resort. A variety of events were held at the property such as beauty contests.
linen-era postcard, ) By 1940 there were 127 buildings on the property, accommodations for 400, horse stables, and tennis courts. In 1943, golf was 50¢ on weekdays, 75¢ on weekends and holidays, rooms cost $1.50 to $4 a night, and spa treatments including Roman mud baths and California
tule mud baths. By the end of the 1950s, travel guides also promised "hiking, painting, badminton, horseshoes, ping pong, croquet, square dancing, modern dancing, motion pictures, and all sorts of planned activities and events for both youngsters and their parents". Guests during the resort's heyday reportedly included
Joe DiMaggio and
Marilyn Monroe,
Sugar Ray Robinson, and an unidentified president of Ireland. A training camp for boxers was also built in the grounds of the resort and was in use in the late 1960s. Among the boxers who used the facility were
Muhammad Ali,
Evander Holyfield,
Sugar Ray Leonard,
Ray Mancini,
Armando Muniz,
Rubén Navarro,
Ken Norton and
Jerry Quarry. The resort had come to be known as the Massacre Canyon Inn, after the hotel built in 1963, in turn named for a nearby landmark canyon that connects to the
Beaumont Badlands via Potrero Creek. After the resort went into bankruptcy in 1978 the property was acquired by the
Church of Scientology for $2.78 million ($ today).
L. Ron Hubbard lived at the compound (called
Gold Base) for a brief period prior to 1980. It is now a heavily guarded compound surrounded by high fences topped with razor wire and spikes, with a prison building nicknamed "
The Hole", and is inaccessible to the public. The Church of Scientology demolished the Massacre Canyon Inn, the Gilman Garage, and the golf course to make way for new buildings. The nine-hole
Golden Era golf course was located near the former Gilman Hot Springs circa 1997. ==Location==