Mount Clemens: the town that was 'Bath City'

The county seat, Mount Clemens, has a nickname that surprises people: “Bath City.” For about 60 years it was one of the most famous health resorts in the country. Visitors came from around the world to soak in its mineral-rich water. It started almost by accident. In 1870, a local flour-mill owner had bad eczema. He tried bathing in the salty water that had turned up while drilling (unsuccessfully) for salt — and his skin cleared up. A doctor began prescribing the baths. The first bathhouse opened in 1873, and the town boomed. By around 1900, the little city had nine bathhouses and more than thirty hotels. The water comes from an ancient sea trapped deep under Michigan. It’s so loaded with minerals that people believed it could cure all sorts of ailments. Celebrities came to take the baths — Babe Ruth, Mae West, Clark Gable, and the Vanderbilts among them. The bath era faded after World War II, as modern medicine took over. The last mineral bathhouse burned down in 1976. But the nickname stuck. Lately the baths are making a small comeback, with a new bathhouse being built on the site of the city’s last working mineral well.

The whole “Bath City USA” story now lives inside the Crocker House Museum at 15 Union Street. The 1869 Victorian home went up the year before that flour-mill owner first noticed his eczema clearing in the brine. It’s old enough to have watched the boom rise and fade around it.