Biohazard and Pathogen Disinfection in Mineral Wells, TX

Mineral Wells is a city in Palo Pinto and Parker counties about 50 miles west of Fort Worth, named for the mineral springs that made it famous in the early 1900s.

The town was founded in 1881 by Judge James A. Lynch, whose family found that their odd-tasting well water seemed to relieve their rheumatism, drawing crowds of health seekers to his farm.

The town's most famous well, the Crazy Well, was named for an elderly woman said to have been cured of mental illness by its lithium-rich water, and it gave its name to the Crazy Water Hotel and the Crazy Water brand.

At the resort's peak, Mineral Wells drew around 150,000 visitors a year who came to drink and bathe in the mineral waters.

The 14-story Baker Hotel opened on November 22, 1929, just three weeks after the stock market crash, with about 450 rooms and the first swimming pool ever built at a Texas hotel, filled with mineral water.

Built by hotel magnate T.B. Baker for about $1.25 million in a town of only some 6,000 people, the Baker drew celebrities and conventions before closing for good in 1972; it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982 and is now being restored.

The 2020 census counted 14,820 people in Mineral Wells, down from 16,788 in 2010, living in about 5,757 households.

Camp Wolters, established in 1925 four miles east of town, became the largest infantry replacement training center of World War II, with a troop capacity near 25,000.

Renamed Fort Wolters, the post became the U.S. Army's Primary Helicopter School in 1956, and more than 40,000 helicopter pilots, including nearly every Army, Marine, and Air Force helicopter pilot of the Vietnam era, trained there before it was deactivated in the 1970s.

Lake Mineral Wells State Park, partly built on former Fort Wolters land, offers rock climbing at Penitentiary Hollow, and the Lake Mineral Wells State Trailway runs 20 miles from downtown to Weatherford.