“This spring is a beautiful place, surrounded with fine scenery, and if the water proves possessed of medicinal properties it will certainly be a place of resort in a few years,” wrote pioneer settler Abraham Harlow Peeples, in the Arizona Miner January 30, 1874. Castle Hot Springs did become a resort, opened by another Arizona pioneer, Frank Murphy, in 1896 for the health conscious about 50 miles from Phoenix in the Bradshaw Mountains. From here, his brother, Territorial Governor Nathan Oakes Murphy, made the first Arizona telephone call in 1902. The resort later welcomed, in January 1945, a Massachusetts naval lieutenant, John F. Kennedy, who completed a post-war rehabilitation here. The 220-acre “green-inspired” resort reopened February 1, 2019, with luxury bungalow and cabin accommodations. Come: “Take the waters.”
