Lifestyle
SoCal's forgotten hot springs oasis is finally reopening — with 50 geothermal pools
Murrieta Hot Springs, a palm-shaded haven of steaming streams and coveted mud just north of Temecula, has been home to a Christian Bible college, a TV-free vegetarian commune and a popular mostly Jewish resort. Now comes a new chapter that will open the grounds and waters to the public for the first time in nearly 30 years.
On Feb. 1, the property will open as a wellness resort and hotel, offering spa services, all sorts of soaking, 174 hotel rooms and several buildings that date back to the early 20th century. Room rates will start at $399, day passes at $89 per adult.
From 1995 until 2022, the property housed the Calvary Chapel Bible College and Conference Center, which was closed to the public and made only limited use of the waters that bubble up from below. (The bathhouse was converted into a library.)
About two years ago, the Texas-based Olympus Real Estate Group laid out $50 million for the property, then set about spending another $50 million to restore and rethink the campus.
Now the 46-acre site, which includes several historic buildings, is all about water again. The resort includes more than 50 pools, tubs and other water features, including a lake that serves as the hub of the compound.
Sun-dappled water of a hot tub at Murrieta Hot Springs Resort.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
The adults-only Oasis swimming pool at Murrieta Hot Springs Resort. Other family-friendly pools are located on the property.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
The bathhouse is once again a bathhouse. It neighbors the resort’s Spanish Revival Stone Lodge, which dates to 1926, and the Spanish-style Monterrey Building, which went up incrementally between 1915 and 1925. Most of the guest rooms date to the 1960s and have been redone in a minimalist style with muted tones.
The property also includes the casual Cafe Azuli, Brew 1902 coffee shop, a Dynamic Fitness center, gazebo and lounge bars, a mud loft (with clay trucked in from the Mojave Desert) and a sauna with panoramic views. A signature upscale restaurant, Talia Kitchen, is due to open in spring. A wine bar, Novel, is due to open later in the year.
Steam rises from the geothermal water flowing through Murrieta Hot Springs Resort.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
The resort’s waters — which visitors drank in its early years — are said to include sulfate, chloride, boron, calcium, lithium, potassium, sodium, silica and bicarbonate.
“Our water comes out of the ground at about 125-130 degrees, depending,” said Dr. Marcus Coplin, the resort’s medical director, noting that the water is cooled to 104 degrees or less before guests bathe. The property also includes several cold-plunge pools whose water is 54 degrees or less. According to the resort’s promotional materials, the waters “enhance circulation, reduce inflammation, uplift mood, and support cellular health.”
“Without being clinical,” Coplin said during a pre-opening tour, “we want to create a data-informed, science-informed approach to health and wellness.”
A decorative pillar outside what will become the bathhouse at Murrieta Hot Springs Resort. (Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Murrieta Hot Springs Resort is a geothermal spa that goes back more than a century. (Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
A view of the largest pool at Murietta Hot Springs Resort.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
The springs first gained popularity as a commercial venture in 1902 under the ownership of German immigrant Fritz Guenther. In 1911, the minor league Los Angeles Angels held their spring training at the hot springs.
Over time, a hotel and other amenities grew, including live music and miniature golf. In a video produced by members of Calvary Chapel, Guenther family members and other longtime locals recalled that the resort was especially popular among Jewish families, perhaps because they were familiar with European traditions of communal bathing.
The Jewish Museum of the American West has called Murrieta “the Catskills of Southern California,” describing it as a favorite spot of Jewish families in the first half of the 20th century, when many of its Spanish Revival buildings were decorated with six-sided stars.
A Hillside suite at Murrieta Hot Springs Resort which will have a private pool. (Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
The view through patterned glass from the bathhouse under construction at Murrieta Hot Springs Resort. (Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
In the late 1960s, the Guenther family sold the resort (then 500 acres) to San Diego attorney Irving Kahn, a transaction that led to an era of widely varied and sometimes controversial uses, including a cancer clinic whose alternative therapies were publicly discredited.
In the 1980s, a New Age health group called Alive Polarity bought the resort and operated it for several years as a vegetarian community free of alcohol, tobacco, television and telephones. Later came a bar called Shakespeare’s Pub.
By 1990s, when Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa bought it, the core property has been reduced to less than 50 acres, much of which had fallen into dilapidation.
The church renovated the property up as a college and conference center for other megachurches, a formula that worked well until enrollment fell and the onset of the pandemic put public gatherings on hold. The Bible college has relocated to Twin Peaks in the San Bernardino Mountains.
For the Olympus Real Estate Group’s managing director, David Dronet, Murrieta is the second step in a strategic campaign that began with the 2018 purchase of The Springs Resort in Pagosa Springs, Colo., another geothermally active, wellness-emphasizing hospitality business. To manage Murrieta, Olympus has hired Remington Hospitality, which runs scores of lodgings and restaurants nationwide.
The Stone Lodge suites at Murrieta Hot Springs Resort.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Murrieta Hot Springs Resort is a geothermal spa that goes back more than a century.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Whatever promotions the new management pursues, it will tough to match the song about the hot springs that entertainer Mickey Katz used to sing in the 1950s. Rich in Yiddish phrases, written by Grace Eppy and Nat Farber, and rediscovered by Jewish Museum of the American West curator Jonathan Friedmann, it included these lyrics:
In Murietta Hot Springs/ Like cowboys without ferd [horses]/ Zey lign [they lie] in the mud baths/ Mitn kop in drerd [with their head in the earth].
Jessie Buckley has been nominated for an Academy Award for best actress for her portrayal of William Shakespeare’s wife in Hamnet.
Kate Green/Getty Images
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Kate Green/Getty Images
Actor Jessie Buckley says she’s always been drawn to the “shadowy bits” of her characters — aspects that are disobedient, or “too much.” Perhaps that’s what led her to play Agnes, the wife of William Shakespeare, in Hamnet.
Buckley says the film, which is based on Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 novel, offered a chance to counter a common narrative about the playwright’s wife: that she “had kept him back from his genius,” Buckley says.
But, she adds, “What Maggie O’Farrell so brilliantly did, not just with Agnes and Shakespeare’s wife, but also with Hamnet, their son, was to bring these people … and give them status beside this great man. … [And] give the full landscape of what it is to be a woman.”
The film is nominated for eight Academy Awards, including best actress for Buckley. In it, she plays a woman deeply connected to nature, who faces conflicts in her marriage, as well as the death of their son Hamnet.
Buckley found out she was pregnant a week after the film wrapped. She’s since given birth to her first child, a daughter.
“The thing that this story offered me, that brought me into this next chapter of my life as a mother was tenderness,” she says. “A mother’s tenderness is ferocious. To love, to birth is no joke. To be born is no joke. And the minute something’s born into the world, you’re always in the precipice of life and death. That’s our path. … I wanted to be a mother so much that that overrode the thought of being afraid of it.”
Jessie Buckley stars as Agnes and Joe Alwyn plays her brother Bartholomew in Hamnet.
Courtesy of Focus Features/Courtesy of Focus Features
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Courtesy of Focus Features/Courtesy of Focus Features
Interview highlights
On filming the scene where she howls in grief when her son dies
I didn’t know that that was going to happen or come out, it wasn’t in the script. I think really [director] Chloé [Zhao] asked all of us to dare to be as present as possible. Of course, leading up to it, you’re aware this scene is coming, but that scene doesn’t stand on its own. By the time I’d met that scene, I had developed such a deep bond with Jacobi Jupe, who plays Hamnet, and [co-stars] Paul [Mescal] and Emily Watson, and all the children and we really were a family. And Jacobi Jupe who plays Hamnet is such an incredible little actor and an incredible soul, and we really were a team. …
The death of a child is unfathomable. I don’t know where it begins and ends. Out of utter respect, I tried to touch an imaginary truth of it in our story as best I could, but there’s no way to define that kind of grief. I’m sure it’s different for so many people. And in that moment, all I had was my imagination but also this relationship that was right in front of me with this little boy and that’s what came out of that.
On what inspired her to pursue singing growing up
I grew up around a lot of music. My mom is a harpist and a singer and my dad has always been passionate about music, so it was always something in our house and always something that was encouraged. … Early on, I have very strong memories of seeing and hearing my mom sing in church and this quite intense mercurial conversation that would happen between her, the story and the people that would listen to her. And at the end of it, something had been cracked between them and these strangers would come up with tears in their eyes. And I guess I saw the power of storytelling through my mom’s singing at a very young age, and that was definitely something that made me think I want to do that.
On her first big break performing as a teen on the BBC singing competition I’d Do Anything — and being criticized by judges about her physical appearance
I was raw. I hadn’t trained. I had a lot to learn and to grow in. I was only 17. I think there was part of their criticism which I think was destructive and unfair when it became about my awkwardness, or they would say I was masculine and send me to kind of a femininity school. … They sent me to [the musical production of] Chicago to put heels on and a leotard and learn how to walk in high heels, which was pretty humiliating, to be honest, and I’m sad about that because I think I was discovering myself as a young woman in the world and wasn’t fully formed. … I was different. I was wild, I had a lot of feeling inside me. I could hardly keep my hands beside myself and I think to kind of criticize a body of a young woman at that time and to make her feel conscious of that was lazy and, I think, boring.
On filming parts of the 2026 film The Bride! while pregnant
I really loved working when I was pregnant. I thought it was a pretty wild experience, especially because I was playing Mary Shelley and I was talking about [this] monstrosity, and here I was with two heartbeats inside me. Becoming a mom and being pregnant did something, I think, for me. My experience of it, it’s so real that it really focuses [me to be] allergic to fake or to disconnection.
Since my daughter has come and I know what that connection is and the real feeling of being in a relationship with somebody … as an actress, it’s very exciting to recognize that in yourself and really take ownership of yourself.
I’m excited to go back and work on this other side of becoming a mother in so many ways, because I’ve shed 10 layers of skin by loving more and experiencing life in such a new way with my daughter. I’m also scared to work again because it’s hard to be a mother and to work. That’s like a constant tug because I love what I do and I’m passionate and I want to continue to grow and learn and fill those spaces that are yet to be filled — and also be a mother. And I think every mother can recognize that tug.
On the possibility of bringing her daughter to travel with her as she works
I haven’t filmed for nearly a year and I cannot wait. I’m hungry to create again. And my daughter will come with me. She’s seven months, so at the moment she can travel with us and it’s a beautiful life. And she meets all these amazing people and I have a feeling that she loves life and that’s a great thing to see in a child. And I hope that’s something that I’ve imparted to her in the short time that she’s been on this earth is that life is beautiful and great and complex and alive and there’s no part of you that needs to be less in your life. You might have to work it out, but it’s worth it.
Lauren Krenzel and Susan Nyakundi produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey adapted it for the web.
Bruce Campbell
I’m Battling Cancer
Published
Bruce Campbell has revealed he has cancer, but says it’s a type that’s treatable, though not curable.
“The Evil Dead” actor shared the news Monday in a message to fans, writing, “Hi folks, these days, when someone is having a health issue, it’s referred to as an ‘opportunity,’ so let’s go with that — I’m having one of those.” He continued, “It’s also called a type of cancer that’s ‘treatable’ not ‘curable.’ I apologize if that’s a shock — it was to me too.”
Campbell said he wouldn’t go into further detail about his diagnosis, but explained his work schedule will be changing. “Appearances and cons and work in general need to take back seat to treatment,” he wrote, adding he plans to focus on getting “as well as I possibly can over the summer.”
As a result, Campbell says he has to cancel several convention appearances this summer, noting, “Treatment needs and professional obligations don’t always go hand-in-hand.”
He says his plan is to tour this fall in support of his new film, “Ernie & Emma,” which he stars in and directs.
Ending on a determined note, Campbell told fans, “I am a tough old son-of-a-bitch … and I expect to be around a while.”
Neve Campbell in Scream 7.
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Paramount Pictures
The OG Scream Queen Neve Campbell returns. Scream 7 re-centers the franchise back on Sidney Prescott. She has a new life, a family, and lots of baggage. You know the drill: Someone dressing up as the masked slasher Ghostface comes for her, her family and friends. There’s lots of stabbing and murder and so many red herrings it’s practically a smorgasbord.
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