Steamboat Hot Springs

Just outside Reno, Steamboat Hot Springs takes its name from the plumes of steam that reminded 1840s emigrants of the steamboats plying the Mississippi back east. Long regarded as sacred ground by the Washoe, Northern Paiute, and Western Shoshone peoples, the site was developed starting in 1860-1862 by Felix Monet and then Dr. Joseph Ellis, who added a hospital and bathhouses.

The arrival of the Virginia & Truckee Railroad in 1871 turned it into a key transfer point toward the Comstock Lode mines, propelling Steamboat into a fashionable spa town complete with a hotel, drugstore, and fifteen bathing facilities. A 1900 earthquake and a 1901 fire brought that golden age to a close; the site today still holds early-20th-century buildings alongside a modern geothermal power plant.