Yavapai people had long visited these geothermal pools and reportedly worked to keep their location secret, valuing the springs’ medicinal properties. Word spread anyway as prospectors combed the Bradshaw Mountains in the mid-1800s, and by the 1880s a rough boarding house had gone up nearby. Frank M. Murphy, brother of Arizona’s territorial governor, bought the property and opened it as Castle Hot Springs in 1896, Arizona’s first wellness resort.
Early guests endured a five-hour horseback ride just to reach it, a hardship that eased only after a train depot opened nearby in 1898. The remoteness became part of the appeal for families like the Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, and Astors, who returned decade after decade to ride, soak, and watch desert sunsets away from public view. A fire in the 1970s badly damaged the resort and forced its closure for decades; new owners bought it in 2014 and completed a full restoration in 2019.