William A. Bowles, a local physician, purchased the land that included the mineral springs and built a small inn.

[12] The property was managed by Lane and Mr. and Mrs. Hugh Wilkins, with the assistance of W. F. Osborn, until 1883, when it was sold to a group of investors who made additional improvements.

[13][14] In 1887 the Monon Railroad built an extension of its line to transport guests to the hotels and springs at French Lick and West Baden, where the two sites competed to offer the best service, entertainment, food and mineral water.

[15] By the late 1800s, guests arrived from across the country on seven separate railroads for relaxation and the alleged curative powers of the mineral water.

Advertised as the Carlsbad of America,[18] the cosmopolitan resort included a casino, an opera house, and a covered, two-deck, one-third-mile oval bicycle and pony track.

A lighted baseball diamond in the center of the track was used as the spring training grounds for several major league teams including the Cincinnati Reds, Chicago Cubs, and Pittsburgh Pirates, among others.

[28] Hotel amenities included a gambling casino and live theater performance every night, as well as opera, concerts, movies, bowling, and billiards.

Palm trees grew in the huge atrium, where birds had free range and guests relaxed on overstuffed furniture grouped in clusters under the 200-foot (61 m) dome.

Outdoors, guests had their choice of a natatorium, two golf courses, horseback riding, baseball, several hiking trails, or bicycling on a covered, double-decked oval track.

Beginning in the late 1880s, when southern Indiana became a favorite destination of the wealthy, the famous, infamous, and near-famous came to relax, play golf, gamble, enjoy fine dining, and be entertained.

[31] As Chris Bundy, author of West Baden Springs: Legacy of Dreams, explained, "These hotels were the Disney World of their time.

Politicians who visited the hotel included Chicago's mayor, "Big Bill" Thompson, and New York's governor, Al Smith.

[5][29][32] Minor renovations to the property began in 1913, but a fire on February 11, 1917, destroyed the hotel's bottling plant, opera house, bowling alley and hospital, forcing their replacement.

Between 1917 and 1919, Italian artisans installed a mosaic terrazzo tile floor composed of two million one-inch squares of marble in the atrium.

Wooden shelters at the springs were replaced with brick structures, and a sunken garden was created with a fountain featuring an angel.

[33] Business at the hotel boomed in the 1920s; however, as ownership of automobiles increased and tourism destinations in Florida and the western United States became more popular, West Baden declined despite Ballard's efforts to attract more guests with trade shows and conventions.

As word of the plummeting stock market spread, people congregated in the brokerage firm's offices at the hotel to confirm the news.

[29][36] Beginning in 1934 the Jesuits began renovating the property to convert it into an austere seminary named West Baden College, an affiliate of Loyola University Chicago, and most of the hotel's luxurious fixtures, furnishings, and decorations were removed.

When the Jesuits sold the facility, they retained ownership of the cemetery land, which the Catholic church in French Lick agreed to maintain.

[40] On November 2, 1966, the Jesuits sold the property to Macauley and Helen Dow Whiting, who donated it to Northwood Institute, a private, coeducational college founded in Midland, Michigan.

Before MacDonald could begin foreclosure proceedings, Marlin declared bankruptcy and the hotel's ownership was tied up in litigation for nearly a decade.

[5] Bill Cook, a billionaire entrepreneur, and his wife, Gayle, from Bloomington, Indiana, have been involved with several historic preservation projects.

The Cook Group initiated efforts to stabilize the hotel's structural integrity and begin exterior restoration during the summer of 1996.

[5] The reconstruction project was featured in West Baden Springs: Save of the Century (1999), a documentary produced by Eugene Brancolini for WTIU Public Television.

[44] HLFI West Baden unsuccessfully marketed the property nationally for more than five years before realizing that casino gaming would be the key to their success.

HLFI joined the Cook Group, Boykin Lodging (owner of the French Lick Springs Hotel), and Orange County citizens to lobby the Indiana legislature to allow casino gambling in the area.

The coalition members spent so much time in Indianapolis lobbying for their cause that they became known as "The Orange Shirts", in reference to the color of their T-shirts bearing the slogan, "Save French Lick and West Baden Springs".

The Cook family decided to form a new company, Blue Sky, LLC, and submitted its application, before purchasing the French Lick Springs Hotel from Boykin Lodging.

[citation needed] A gala event on June 23, 2007, marked the reopening of the West Baden Springs Hotel, seventy-five years after it closed.

[45] The West Baden hotel's reconfigured space contained 243 rooms and suites, fewer than half of the total in the original structure.