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Curtis Howe Springer (December 2, 1896 – August 19, 1985)^[1] was an American radio evangelist, self-proclaimed medical doctor and Methodist minister best known for founding the Zzyzx Mineral Springs resort in the California desert. In actuality, Springer was neither a doctor nor a minister.^[2]

Springer was a private in the United States Army.^[1]

Springer was a radio evangelist in the 1930s, starring at KDKA in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He had already founded or managed six other resorts by the time he founded Zzyzx, California, in 1944.^[3]

In 1944, Springer and his fiancée filed a mining claim on federal land to 12,800 acres (51.8 km²) of desert, claiming a tract about 8 miles (13 km) long and 3 miles (4.8 km) wide.^[2] The land contained the remains of an 1860 Army post and a railroad station on the defunct Tonopah and Tidewater Railroad. On this land, which he called "a mosquito swamp"^[3] but named Zzyzx, Springer erected a sixty-room hotel, a church, a cross-shaped health spa with mineral baths, a radio broadcast studio, a private airstrip dubbed "Zyport" and several other buildings which included a castle. The "Boulevard of Dreams" was a divided parkway leading to an oasis on Lake Tuendae, later identified as the habitat of the endangered Mohave chub.^[2] While building his retreat, he spent half the week in Los Angeles, still recording his radio program, and rounding up workers to build his new resort by offering room and board at Zzyzx in exchange for labor.^[3]

From Zzyzx, Springer continued his syndicated radio program, at one point carried by 221 stations in the United States and 102 more abroad, mixing religious music and his own radio evangelism. Along with this came his requests that listeners send him "donations" to get his special cures for everything from hair loss to cancer. The potions were actually little more than a blend of celery, carrot and parsley juices.^[2] The Zzyzx Springs experience itself included goat milk; allegedly life-prolonging "Antedeluvian Tea"; a $25, self-administered hemorrhoid cure; more solicitations for "donations"; and a twice-daily sermon over the loudspeakers.^[3]

By the late 1960s, Springer had begun marking off lots on the land and allowing "donors" of large sums of money to his ministry to build homes on the lots. This caught the attention of federal officials.^[3] While Springer had posted mining claims in the area, under the General Mining Law of 1872, it was still public land until such time that he validated the claims for patent by proving to federal government geologists that the claim contained locateable minerals that could be extracted at a profit.

The federal government took Springer to court claiming he was squatting on federal land.^[2] In 1974, he was found guilty of the charge. He offered to pay $34,187 in back rent on the land to the Bureau of Land Management, but the government refused the payment and evicted him and his few hundred local followers.^[3] Springer was also arrested for making false claims about his products.^[2] He was represented in court by criminal attorney Gladys Towles Root. In the trial, Springer was convicted of false advertising. He filed several appeals on this conviction, and two years later ended up serving 49 days of a 60-day sentence.

Following the eviction, in 1976, the Bureau of Land Management allowed the California State University to manage the facilities and land in and around Zzyzx. A consortium of CSU campuses now use Springer's former resort as their Desert Studies Center.^[2]

According to the journal Word Ways and the book Weird California, Springer died in Las Vegas, Nevada, in 1986 at the age of 90;^[2][3] cemetery records show his death date as August 19, 1985, and a birthdate that would have made him 89.^[1] He was buried in the Riverside National Cemetery in Riverside, California on April 26, 1991.^[1]

[edit] See also

• Quackery
• Squatting
• Zzyzx, California

[edit] References