DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Back in 1892, somebody in Marlin had a perfectly reasonable idea — drill a well, get some water, keep the town from going thirsty. Simple enough plan.
So they put the bit in the ground right here, and they drilled, and they drilled, and what came up was... not exactly what they had in mind. Forty-eight thousand gallons a day of hot mineral water, boiling up out of an artesian deposit sitting underneath the whole area. Forty-eight thousand gallons.
Every single day. You wanted a public water supply, and the earth handed you something considerably more dramatic than that. Now, the first reaction — perfectly understandable — was that this stuff was unfit for human use.
Hot, mineral-heavy, smelling of the deep earth. Not exactly what you'd pour into a glass on a summer afternoon. But then somebody sent it off for analysis, and the analysis came back with a different verdict entirely: curative powers.
The water, it turned out, possessed curative powers. Well. That changes the conversation.
On the initiative of T. A. Cheeves and Doctors J.
W. Cook, J. W.
Torbett, and N. D. Buie, Marlin stopped thinkin' about this as a problem and started thinkin' about it as an opportunity.
They developed a health resort. A bath house went up in 1895. Another well was drilled in 1910, because apparently forty-eight thousand gallons a day left room for ambition.
And Marlin became, in the words of the marker itself, a Mecca — a Mecca for health-seekers coming in from all parts of the country, and providing the basis for local prosperity. They drilled for drinking water. They found something the whole nation wanted to come to Texas to experience.
Not every miscalculation works out that well.
What the marker says
A well drilled on this site in 1892, in an effort to secure a public water supply, produced 48,000 gallons of hot mineral water daily from an artesian deposit underlying the area. At first believed unfit for human use, analysis proved the water possessed curative powers. On initiative of T. A. Cheeves, Drs. J. W. Cook, J. W. Torbett,and N. D. Buie, a health resort was developed, with a bath house built in 1895, and another well drilled in 1910. Marlin became a Mecca for health-seekers from all parts of the country, providing basis for local prosperity.