Indian Springs is centered on a flowing artesian well, where groundwater seeping into an aquifer from higher elevation builds pressure and forces trapped water up through a fissure to the surface, and for generations many people have believed the mineral spring water had therapeutic and curative effects. The Muscogee (Creek) people, who had historical ties to Alabama and Georgia and whose towns were divided between upper towns mostly in present-day Alabama and lower towns in what is now Georgia, used the springs for generations before European contact while practicing agriculture, fishing, and hunting for subsistence. As Georgia expanded westward into Creek territory, treaties brought major land losses; after the Treaty of Indian Springs in 1821, the Creek National Council resisted further concessions, but William McIntosh, a Lower Creek leader and signer of the 1821 treaty, signed another treaty in 1825 against their wishes, after which he and other signers were sentenced to death by the Creek National Council and executed. Creek resistance to Georgia's expansion ended with the Treaty of Washington in 1826, all remaining Creek lands in Georgia were ceded, and as many as 20,000 Creeks were forcibly removed westward. The community of Indian Springs grew after ten acres around the spring were reserved for public use by state statute as Lot Number 1 in the 1827 land lottery, a tract that has remained in state custody and claims to be the oldest state-owned recreation area in the country. Over the next 100 years numerous hotels developed there, beginning with the Indian Springs Hotel established by William McIntosh, and larger resorts accommodated as many as 700 guests, but the grand-hotel era declined in the late nineteenth century as fires destroyed some hotels, automobiles and better roads opened access to other destinations, and science and medicine changed public opinion about the springs' medicinal value. After the stock market crash of 1929 and the onset of the Great Depression, New Deal programs included the Civilian Conservation Corps, and Company 459 built most of the stone park structures still visible there today.