Slates Hot Springs

Slates Hot Springs (also known as Big Sur Hot Springs, Slate's Hot Springs, Slate's Springs, and Slate's Hot Sulphur Springs) is the site of a hot spring in the Big Sur region of Monterey County, California. It is located 8 miles (13 km) north-northwest of Lopez Point, at an elevation of 118 feet (36 m).

Thomas B. Slate filed a land patent for the site and adjacent land on September 9, 1882. He built a home on the site of the springs in 1868 and developed the springs for tourists. He claimed that the waters cured him of arthritis and it attracted others seeking a cure for their physical ailments. He sold the property to Salinas physician Dr. Henry Cloyd Murphy in 1910, whose family owned it until 1967, when Michael Murphy and Dick Price bought it from the estate of Michael's grandmother, Vinnie McDonald Murphy. They incorporated the business as Esalen Institute.

The Esselen people resided along the upper Carmel and Arroyo Seco Rivers, and along the Big Sur coast from near present-day Hurricane Point to the vicinity of Vicente Creek in the south, including Slate Hot Springs. Carbon dating tests of artifacts found near Slates Hot Springs, presently owned by Esalen Institute, indicate human presence as early as 3500 BC. With easy access to the ocean, fresh water and hot springs, the Esselen people used the site regularly, and certain areas were reserved as burial grounds. The coastal Santa Lucia Mountains are very rugged, making the area relatively inaccessible, long-term habitation a challenge, and limiting the size of the native population.

The Esselen population was largely decimated when they were forcibly relocated to three Spanish missions: Mission San Carlos in Carmel, Mission Nuestra Señora de la Soledad in Soledad, and Mission San Antonio de Padua in Jolon. Without resistance to European disease, large numbers died from measles, smallpox, and syphilis, along with starvation, overwork, and torture. This wiped out 90 percent of the native population. Today, a few people in the area can still trace their ancestry to the Esselen and they maintain a relationship with Esalen Institute.

In the 1870s, Thomas Slate visited the Big Sur site to use the hot springs because he suffered from severe arthritis. On September 9, 1882, he filed a land patent under the Homestead Act of 1862. The settlement began known as Slates Hot Springs. It was the first tourist-oriented business in Big Sur, frequented by people seeking relief from similar afflictions.

In 1918, the California State Mining Bureau issued a report from the state mineralogist about the springs and their properties. According to the report,

Slates Hot Springs is the southernmost of the four groups of hot springs in coastal Monterey County. In 1918, J. A. Little owned the site. The water there issued at ten principal points in a distance of 125 yards (114 m), halfway up the face of the bluffs that here border the ocean. A small private bathhouse has been built near the easternmost spring. The waters range in temperature from 110 °F (43 °C) to 121 °F (49 °C), are mildly sulphuretted, and the run-off streams are lined with abundant green algous growth. Small deposits of alum, gypsum, and carbonate of lime or magnesia were noted at the edge of one spring. The waters taste distinctly sweetish.

About 0.25 miles (0.4 km) northwest of the main group, on the left bank of Hot Creek, is another spring, 98 °F (37 °C) in temperature. This spring yields perhaps 5 US gallons (19 L) a minute and was in 1918 used for laundering clothes.