John Weber purchased this property, with its black "moor" earth and a spring, in 1899. The hotel, patterned after European spas, and the springhouse opened in 1911. Spring water and warm mud baths, promoted as therapeutic, were available at the hotel. The gold course opened in 1915. The hotel closed in 1959, reopened as Mt. St. Paul Seminary in 1962, then as a co-educational college in 1968, which closed 1970. Since 1972 it has been a Waukesha County office building.