This is Who?...Take a guess from first impression

19 August 2023

This is Who?...Take a guess from first impression

A daytme soapstar Susan Lucci-look-alike? Nope

Recycle items from Good Will Industries? Nope

“One of my other favorite things is the actual massage table that came from the baths,”

“Many, many baseball players who came here for spring training have laid on that table and gotten massages and we have tons of pictures of them posing in their towels on the scale getting weighed in."

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ANSWER: Mesa Historical Museum Executive Director Susan Ricci

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There’s a lot to talk about – and to see – in the exhibit, especially now that the site at Main Street and Recker Road has been closed for nearly 25 years and is fenced off by the new owner, who plans to build an apartment complex surrounding it.
The site’s healing waters attracted celebrities, especially professional athletes and specifically professional baseball players.
“Arguably, the Buckhorn was a principal influence on enticing Major League Baseball to begin annual spring training in Mesa and the Valley,” Ricci said.

The Wildlife Museum’s 400 pieces of taxidermy – now the property of Arizona State University’s School of Life Sciences – also was a tourist magnet.
And there were dozens of quirky artifacts, such as furniture made largely of horns from bulls, that added to the site’s allure.

Ricci cited less palpable but equally important aspects of the Buckhorn, which is on the National Register of Historic Places and has been so revered by locals that voters had authorized the city to buy it, though the sale never materialized.

“A lot of people drive by there and they see it, and they want to know what’s happening to it because the property has degraded,” she said. “They had community barbecues – and people still remember those old community barbecues because it was part of spring training.”

“The Buckhorn has also gifted us with quite a lot of artifacts and so that was another reason to do the exhibit. We have all this great art furniture and a lot of baseball memorabilia and tons and tons of pictures,” Ricci said.

“We also have a lot of Alice’s old ledgers that she kept. She kept really detailed notes on all the different guests that came to the Buckhorn.”

The Mesa Preservation Foundation owns those binders “and those are going to be interesting to go through and look at Alice’s notes and see some of the baseball players who signed in an came through the Buckhorn,” Ricci said.
“It was so famous and people from all over the United States would come and stay.”
The thermal springs gave the Sligers a rags-to-riches life...