Curtis Howe Springer (December 2, 1896 – August 19, 1985) was an American radio evangelist, self-proclaimed medical doctor and Methodist minister best known for founding the Zzyzx Mineral Springs resort located within Southern California's Mojave Desert.

[3] In the early 1970s, the federal government discovered that Springer held no legal rights to the land where Zzyzx stood; consequently, he was evicted from the space and briefly imprisoned.

[4] In Springer's early life, he "drummed up crowds for William Jennings Bryan's tirades against demon rum" and was a sheet music vendor at Billy Sunday's evangelical services.

[9] Although all his lectures were "free", Springer would ask for donations part-way through his speech, and often attempt to sell audience members private courses in psychoanalysis for $25 per session.

After he applied for airtime on WGN radio, the station contacted American Medical Association's Bureau of Investigations for information regarding Springer.

An extensive article in the September 14, 1936 edition of Journal of the American Medical Association titled "Curtis Howe Springer: A Quack and His Nostrums" detailed his exploits and lack of education.

[9] In addition, he would often use the radio show to sell his "medicines", including the antacid Re-Hib (confirmed by the American Medical Association to be mostly baking soda) and Antediluvian Tea ("a crude mixture of laxative herbs").

[4] He attempted to set up other resorts and gatherings in Wilkes-Barre, Johnstown, and Mount Davis in Pennsylvania; Cumberland, Maryland; and Davenport, Iowa.

[5][11] In time, 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.

[1] 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.

[13] Two publications, the journal Word Ways and the book Weird California, have incorrectly reported Springer's year of death as 1986.