Before Mount Rainier National Park was established and before the road to Paradise was engineered, visitors reached the area on horseback through the wilderness to stay at the Longmire Medical Springs Resort, which opened in 1890. Guests paid eight dollars a week for board and treatment at the springs. The resort’s first hotel was a two-story building measuring 20 by 30 feet, with five sleeping rooms upstairs. Soaking in the springs or taking a sulphur plunge bath was recommended, and rubs and massages were specialties of the house. In response to tourist demand, the Longmires later enlarged the hotel, added cabins and tents, and built bathhouses over the hot springs with cedar-planked tubs sunken into the ground. Elcaine Longmire, James Longmire’s eldest son, and his wife Martha were proprietors of the resort during its heyday in the early 1900s. The property was sold in 1920, and the original outdated hotel was demolished and burned. That same year, the spring received its stone encasement and seating, and more modern facilities were constructed in the area.