The Ute Indians traveled this area, before the first white settler ever showed his face. The Utes arrived in the spring and spent summers in the area, hunting and taking the hot. healing waters of the springs that could be found in the river, before it was called the Grand River, before it was named the Colorado River. The utes referred to the springs as Yampah, or Big Medicine, and believed in the restorative and healing powers of the waters.
The first white men to learn of the miraculous springs of the Ute Indians was the exploration party of Captain Richard Sopris, in the summer of 1860. Captain Sopris, having become ill during his exploration, was taken to the springs for medicinal purposes. He and his party camped on the site of the present-day Hot Springs Lodge and Sopris named the place Grand Springs, a name that continued to be used until 1885.
In 1878, a young man named James Landis traveled down from Leadville to Grand 5prings with a donkey pack to cut meadow hay for Leadville's horses. He met with friendly Ute Indians, who invited him to use their hogan which they had constructed over the springs on the south side of the river. Landis found the experience and the area to be so pleasant and appealing that he came back the following spring and filed squatter's rights to 160 acres and built a small cabin on the Roaring Fork River. In the year between his friendly visit with the Utes and his return to set up a homestead, the Utes had been driven out of the valley, which left the area open to the hundreds of white settlers who would follow.
In 1882, James Landis sold his Landis Hot Springs Ranch to a man who had come by way of Aspen, Isaac Cooper, fox the sum of $1500.00, who formed the Defiance Town and Land Company with two other partners. Cooper, a semi-invalid enjoyed and believed in the restorative powers of the hot springs, and dreamed of making the Grand Springs into a health resort which he could share with the world. Lacking the capital to make his dream come true, Landis had to be content with using the springs for his own enjoyment.
A mere five years later, Walter B. Devereux, a mining engineer brought to Aspen by Jerome Wheeler to manage the Aspen Mine and construct a smelter there, purchased the land containing the springs and 10 acres surrounding it from Landis for $ 125,000, and set out to realize the dream shared by Cooper-the construction of a world class spa. By separating the river and the springs with a rock wall and encircling the springs with masonry, the stage was set for the construction of the Natatorium, as the pool was called. The Natatorium was completed in 1888 and the beautiful stone bathhouse, designed by Viennese architect Theodore Von Rosenberg, was completed in 1890. The resulting spa complex was a place of beauty and elegance for which no expense was too great or furnishing too good. The natural bounty and beauty of the surroundings and the elegance of a world class spa, quickly turned a remote mountain region into the "boomtown" of Glenwood Springs.