Overview

The West Baden Springs Hotel, formerly the West Baden Inn, is part of the French Lick Resort and is a national historic landmark hotel in West Baden Springs, Orange County, Indiana. It has a 200-foot (61 m) dome over its atrium. Prior to the completion of the Coliseum in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1955, the dome was the largest free-spanning dome in the United States. From 1902 to 1913 it was the largest dome in the world. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974, the hotel became a National Historic Landmark in 1987. It is a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark and one of the hotels in the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Historic Hotels of America program.
Roaming bears and herds of deer and buffalo once visited the salt lick near the present-day site of the West Baden Springs Hotel as they traveled along the Buffalo Trace in southern Indiana. Native Americans also used the area as hunting grounds. Following the arrival of French traders and settlers in the vicinity, the site became known as French Lick. When George Rogers Clark passed through southern Indiana in 1778, he camped less than a mile from the salt licks and mineral springs in Orange County that became known as French Lick and West Baden Springs. The presence of salt deposits enticed the state government to consider mining large quantities of salt for early pioneers to use in preserving meat, but when it was determined that the saline content was insufficient to support large-scale salt mining, the property was offered for sale around 1832. William A. Bowles, a local physician, purchased the land that included the mineral springs and built a small inn. Constructed around 1840–45, it developed into the French Lick Springs Hotel, a popular health resort.
Bowles served as a commissioned officer in the U.S. Army during the Mexican–American War. Before his departure for military service in 1846, Bowles signed a five-year lease with John A. Lane, a physician/patent medicine salesman, who agreed to enlarge and improve the facility at French Lick. The business deal would allow Bowles to enjoy an improved facility with the potential for increased business at the lease’s end, and Lane would make a potential profit from his investment. Part of Bowles’ land included the mineral springs known as Mile Lick, 1 mile (1.6 km) north of French Lick. Much of the property surrounding the Mile Lick springs was marshy, subject to yearly flooding, and unsuitable to farming, but Lane envisioned it as a business area that would surpass French Lick. In 1851 he purchased 770 acres (310 hectares) from Bowles. Lane assembled a sawmill, erected a bridge to traverse Lick Creek, and built a hotel larger than the French Lick Springs, beginning the competition between the two Orange County sites.