In the mid-19th century, the Mountain Springs Resort was a popular destination for well-to-do visitors seeking a country retreat with salubrious natural springs.

Presidents Buchanan, Lincoln, and Grant visited the place.

Later in the 10 th century, the Resort hosted significant meetings and conferences of Spiritualists.

The Reading Railroad delivered passengers from many East Coast cities to the station only a short distance from the resort.

By the mid-20th century, the resort had closed and the buildings abandoned to natural decay.

In my youth, I knew the site only as a deteriorating wreck, shorn of its former grandeur.

The buildings were finally demolished in the late 20 th century and a modern hotel erected on the site.

It is another vanished edifice that I often wished to have been able to visit when it was a place of beauty.

Here is a hand-colored postcard photograph, printed in Germany circa 1905.

The postcard, addressed to Sylvia Wechter of Lincoln, was mailed from Lincoln, Pa on December 28, 1906.

A penciled message or scribble is faintly discernible on the face, but I have been unable to restore it.

I am now searching for images of this building in the few years of the 1940’s when it contained the Ephrata Community Hospital.