Tucked into the green foothills below the Wallowa Mountains in northeastern Oregon, Medical Springs is a tiny community with an outsized history — one built around the naturally warm, mineral-rich waters that rise here. Long prized for their reputed healing properties, the springs gave the settlement both its name and its early claim to fame.

The story began in 1868, when pioneer Dunham Wright — a cousin of Abraham Lincoln — settled the area after the hot springs were discovered. Within a year he had built a cabin and a small bathhouse, and over the following decades Medical Springs blossomed into a genuine resort town. A two-story, forty-room hotel went up in 1886, complete with parlors and a ballroom, and by the early 1900s the town had added a sanitarium, a general store, and a post office. Unlike the genteel Hot Lake Resort nearby, Medical Springs drew a livelier crowd of miners, gamblers, and cowboys looking to soak and unwind.

The resort's golden-era centerpiece arrived in 1929: a hot-spring-fed, Olympic-size swimming pool that plunged to nine feet at the deep end, its warm mineral water believed to soothe whatever ailed you. Fires and the passing decades eventually quieted the old resort, and today the property remains in private hands — a peaceful piece of living Oregon history rather than a public attraction.

While you can't drop in for a soak, Medical Springs still makes a worthwhile waypoint for history lovers exploring Baker and Union counties. The surrounding country — the edge of the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest, with its forests, lakes, and mountain trails — offers plenty of public places to stretch your legs, and the little community itself is a quiet reminder of the frontier spa towns that once drew travelers from across the West.