Major support for Oregon Field Guide is provided by... [ ♪♪♪ ] McCLUSKEY: In the foothills of Mount Hood, nestled in a beautiful old-growth forest, Bagby Hot Springs has been one of Oregon's most beloved natural places for generations.

[ birds chirping ] MAN: This forest, it's magical.

WOMAN: It's a place that not a lot of people outside of the Portland area know about, but people who are here, it's part of our lore.

MAN: To me, you sort of snuggle into Bagby.

You're in the water and you feel the forest all around you.

You feel part of that.

MAN: It's dependable, it's quiet.

No matter what's going on in the outside world, it stays the same up here.

It's peaceful... until you introduce the human element.

[ car alarm blaring, people chattering and laughing ] Bagby Hot Springs has a long, sordid reputation: trash, vandalism, partying, and even crime.

Growing up in Oregon, I watched the decline of Bagby over the decades... despite the repeated efforts of volunteers to clean it up.

By 2023, Bagby had gotten to the worst it had ever been.

MAN: It's like an explosion of destruction: the hot water, the cold water, the tubs, the bathhouse.

There's nothing, almost nothing left that's salvageable.

[ ♪♪♪ ] Things had gotten so bad by 2023 that the springs were closed to the public and the historic bathhouse was condemned as unsafe.

But once again, folks were stepping in to try and save it.

[ electric drill whirring ] So in my role as a reporter for Oregon Public Broadcasting, I set out to uncover why Bagby has been such an issue for so many decades.

And if, this time, there is any hope at all that this special Oregon place can actually be saved.

Like every natural hot springs, the story of Bagby starts with water.

Here the water burbles from the ground, a continuous flow at a scalding 138 degrees.

To understand Bagby, I needed to learn more about what creates hot springs in the first place and how far our history with soaking goes back.

So I met up with Jeff Birkby, a hot springs geothermal expert.

If you look at the tectonic plates as pieces of a jigsaw puzzle around the Earth, hot springs exist where they are because of the suture between these pieces of the plates.

Over time, water, rainwater will go down very deep into the ground and be heated by magma at depth, tens of thousands of feet deep.

And then it finds another crack to come back up to the surface.

And if that crack goes all the way to the surface of the Earth, it can emerge as a hot springs.

It can take thousands of years to complete the cycle.

This thousand-year journey of water through the earth makes hot springs like Bagby so rich in minerals, which is why people have visited for health and wellness since time immemorial.

A lot of hot springs have legends about the healing properties of the hot water.

And stories of the Native Americans bathing their elderly tribal members in the hot water for arthritis and other things.

So it was well-known to the Native Americans.

From 1865 to 1885 is when you see the homesteading, where people would stake a claim to a hot springs.

And the first step was often just water out of the ground with maybe a very rude log cabin over it.

[ ♪♪♪ ] Bagby Hot Springs was homesteaded in the 1880s by a guy named Robert Bagby, who gave his name to the hot springs but nothing else.

[ ♪♪♪ ] While hot springs like Bagby were simple homesteads, others, like Hot Lake in eastern Oregon, were developed into lavish health spas in the style of the sanatoriums back East and in Europe.

WOMAN: There was something called the Water Cure.

It was a transatlantic movement: bathing in waters and bathing in mineral waters too as a way to soothe bodies and to really think about pure water at a time when there's not a lot of pure water in cities.

From the late 1800s to the early 20th century, Northwest hot springs like Carson, Belknap, Breitenbush and Ashland's Lithia Springs were also developed into tourist destinations, promoting the health benefits of "healing waters."

When the Forest Service was formed in the beginning of the 20th century, Bagby Hot Springs became an outpost for Rangers, and a cabin was built in 1913.

Then, during the Great Depression of the 1930s, the Civilian Conservation Corps developed the springs by building a rustic bathhouse with soaking tubs carved from giant logs.

Bagby was just one of many projects on the National Forest that included trails, lookout towers, campgrounds, and even the iconic Timberline Lodge.

Keeping these young men busy and employed was a big part of the New Deal, but it also meant that they are expanding the recreation zones for typical Oregonians and really finding a low-cost way for people to vacation and enjoy the outdoors.

Bagby was locally known by hunters, fishermen, and youth programs like the Scouts.

But with the trail being a several day pack-in, it stayed off the beaten path.

JEFF: It was a very difficult, arduous trip to get there, often up to two or three days to get to Bagby.

In 1960, a new logging road made it possible for people to drive within a couple miles to Bagby.

And in the 1970s, a renewed interest in the concept of hot springs as healing waters drew a new generation of soakers.

CATHERINE: Within the 1960s and '70s, the "Back to the Land" movement really brought a lot of people out to Bagby who were interested in holistic wellness, similar to the 19th century, but with a new 1960s and '70s flair where they're interested in yoga, in meditation, in soaking, and really becoming one with the forest around them.

To this "Back to the Land" generation, folks like Larry Miller found in Bagby a sacred place of communion with nature.

LARRY: I fell in love with this place in '74, this old-growth magnificent forest, with all this sensory input of the green and the water and the wood of the building.

There's just a magic to it.

Just like going to church.

CATHERINE: There is a long thread of finding spiritualism in the wilderness.

The fact that you could go outside of your community and find connection to nature and somehow understand God or understand a connection that is larger than yourself.

In the 1970s, Oregon's population surged.

More than half a million people moved to the metro areas closest to Bagby.

And soon, more visitors began to show up at the once secluded springs... and OPB made a special report on the troubles at Bagby.

OPB REPORTER: But as the number of people who enjoyed Bagby grew, so did the problems.

Because it is a remote area, vandalism has taken its toll.

McCLUSKEY: In 1979, a candle started a fire that destroyed the bathhouse.

A grassroots group of volunteers rallied to rebuild.

They called themselves the "Friends of Bagby."

MAN: And the Friends of Bagby, although very loosely organized, did come to the Forest Service and wanted to give us some assistance.

And what started as a very loose idea that was not very well defined has grown into this.

The volunteers rebuilt the bathhouse and hollowed out log tubs, using hand tools like the original Civilian Conservation Corps builders of the 1930s.

OPB REPORTER: The group also plans to have someone on the site at all times to prevent vandalism in the future.

Hopefully we will start a whole new era.

MAN: Bagby was rebuilt.

Their task was done.

Now is the Friends of Bagby going to manage Bagby Hot Springs now?

And I'll tell you, managing a hot springs is not nearly as much fun as building bathhouses.

[ ♪♪♪ ] McCLUSKEY: From the high point of the new hand-crafted facilities, Bagby gradually descended into an era of disrepair and conflict.

MAN: We had gang activity, we had drugs, the alcohol.

We'd get reports of rapes, assaults.

I mean, it was at the point where the Forest Service-- you know, me as the person that was overseeing this-- I would not put a volunteer up here.

The pitfall of a space that is not managed is that it can become unmanageable.

And that ends up reflecting the systemic issues in Oregon at that moment.

REPORTER: Some said it could never happen here.

CATHERINE: So if there is rising crime or unemployment as well as other issues about drug use and alcohol abuse, any issues that exist statewide will be in Bagby too.

McCLUSKEY: It was during this rough period for Bagby that Mike Rysavy first experienced the hot springs.

He started volunteering with some of the folks who had been in the original Friends of Bagby.

And during one work stay at the springs, he met another hot-springs enthusiast.

WOMAN: As a teenager, I came across a hot-springs guidebook that my parents had.

Well, I took that guidebook, and it was like a checklist of just all these places that I could adventure.

So we drove up to Bagby.

I have a 1973 Volkswagen bus that I would do all my camping in.

So we were soaking there and Mike came down, and he was one of the Friends of Bagby volunteers.

He just strips down and jumps in the tub and starts talking.

I'm not going to say, like, I was in love with him right at that moment, but there was definitely, you know, a strong connection.

I had found someone else that loved hot springs as much as I did.

Meeting at Bagby became an unexpected first date for Mike and Tamarah.

They hung out until it was time for Tamarah to head home... only to find something else unexpected.

MIKE: So I was going to take her down to my car and then drive her to her car.

There was no car.

TAMARAH: I knew there was, like, vandalism at Bagby, but I was kind of like, "I don't know if this guy's telling the truth," you know?

Because he was so calm about it.

He was just like, "Well, it was right here and now it's gone."

MIKE: And I found it three miles down the road, burned to the ground.

Wheels were melted in half.

Despite Mike's car getting torched at Bagby-- or perhaps partly because of it-- Mike and Tamarah clinched their relationship and started working to get Bagby back on track.

Mike, Tamarah, and the other volunteers formed a nonprofit group, the Northwest Forest Conservancy.

The baton had been passed from one generation to the next with an almost identical call to action: restore the historic buildings at Bagby and try to clean up the trash and curtail the vandalism.

In that 2006, 2007, 2008 timeframe, everything kept getting better.

When I say everything: crime dropped, the historic cabin was getting restored, the bathhouses were getting fixed and maintained and functional in every single way.

In 2008, OPB's Oregon Field Guide reported that things were looking better at Bagby.

Oregon certainly has a number of spectacular hot springs, but one of its most beloved is also one of its most infamous.

I'm speaking, of course, of Bagby Hot Springs.

LARRY READ: The use is changing.

The element that was here before has gone someplace else and the new users are coming in, and it's just going to take time for it to build its own reputation.

As volunteer efforts began to take hold at Bagby, the Forest Service made an unexpected change in 2012: they ended the era of volunteers managing Bagby.

Instead, they folded the management of the hot springs into a contract to run all the campgrounds on the Mount Hood National Forest and offered it to a for-profit company from California under a 10-year concessionaire permit.

And I lasted about a month and a half because I got so disgusted with the management company.

They gave us no support.

They didn't have an understanding of what this place was about, what it was like.

They just wanted to make it a cash cow.

WOMAN: I've heard numbers as many as 60,000 a year at some point were visiting this place, and it just got loved to death.

So I left and vowed never to return.

Mike and Tamarah felt disillusioned and disempowered to help Bagby anymore.

So they took their love of hot springs and moved to eastern Oregon, where they had the opportunity to purchase none other than the historic Hot Lake Resort, outside of La Grande.

Its heyday as an elegant sanatorium during the era of the healing waters had long passed... but the aging resort offered the couple a chance to apply their restoration skills and also to manage a hot springs under their own rules.

So over the next decade, Mike and Tamarah focused on raising their kids and putting their passion for hot-springs soaking into the Hot Lake Resort.

And Bagby might have become a chapter in their lives, receding into their past.

But in 2022, the 10-year permit to operate Bagby was coming up for renewal and it was all too clear that the management at Bagby had not worked out.

Once again, the springs had slipped back into familiar troubles: broken facilities, vandalism, and crime.

So the Forest Service put out a request for proposals and a call-out to anyone interested in taking on the troubled hot springs.

Mike had never stopped thinking of Bagby and had some ideas he was eager to share.

I knew that there was no talking Mike out of it.

And I love Bagby too, but I was on the more realistic side of, like, how are we going to do this?

And he was just, "We'll figure it out."

Well, this trail's seen better days.

In 2023, just over 10 years since saying goodbye to Bagby, Mike found himself back once again, leading a crew of volunteers.

So we're going to put this handrail up from this post to that post and allow this viewing area for the hot springs to still be used.

Oh, this is a pretty rotten post.

MAN: Yep.

MIKE: Okay, well, we're going to try to-- [ laughs ] You know, yeah, this is just indicative of everything that we're doing up here.

You go to replace something, and the next thing is rotten, the next thing is broken.

Okay, we can pin it.

I am really excited to get involved in restoring it and getting it back up and functioning to its glory days.

As soon as I found out Mike and Tamarah got the contract, I jumped on the volunteer wagon, and here I am.

[ chuckles ] Mike and his volunteers set out on one of their first projects: getting a handle on the incredible amount of graffiti.

[ motor rumbling ] With a generator and pressure washer, they spend the next couple days trying to clean off the wood.

MIKE: "Leave it better than you found it."

You know, there's a number of tags around here that talk about respecting the springs.

All the while they're tagging it with multicolored paint and, in this case, an alien smoking a, uh... something.

[ chuckles ] Well, that's a lot better than it was.

T.J., one of the new caretakers of Bagby, finds fighting graffiti a daily battle.

[ sighs ] All of it's annoying.

All of it's annoying, and all of it is M.O.O.P.

It's "matter out of place."

It doesn't belong here.

But the graffiti doesn't bother everyone.

WOMAN: It's people's names, just people letting you know, "Hey, I was here.

Hey, I was having a good time, and I want you to remember that I was here.

I want to remember that I was here."

Like, this 2x4 or this 4x4, it's going to be replaced in 10 years regardless, it's going to rot out anyways, so that's not defacing it.

That's just letting people know you're here.

My name is carved into those walls up there... [ laughs ] from when I was probably 20 years old, you know?

I'm definitely-- I didn't bring anything to carve anything, but I am bringing my kids up here this summer and we're going to carve it up.

In addition to the battle to keep graffiti at bay, new staff members like Mona make daily trash patrols.

So we usually get up about 7:30 in the morning and start heading up the trail.

Even though Mona cleaned the trail yesterday, this morning it is strewn with fresh trash.

But trash clean-up is just the surface level.

Mona's most important job is trying to change the behavior of the visitors, educating them on the rules and etiquette of Bagby.

Knockity-knock-knock-knock.

Hi, guys, how's it going?

Hey.

So I'm Mona.

I'm the camp host here.

It's clothing-optional up here.

We also ask everybody, if there's a line to keep your soak to half-hour, 45 minutes.

Just want to make sure everybody knows there's also no drugs or alcohol out of here.

[ soaker chuckles ] Um... As a rule, I pour it out, because then I don't have to worry about somebody getting caught with it.

I don't want anybody throwing the bottle over the side and leaving glass and stuff, so we'll just pick it up and take care of it.

[ people chattering, loud rock music playing ] The increase of tagging and trash is not the only way that modern visitors are making a mark on Bagby.

MIKE: People have their phone or their Bluetooth speaker blaring, and it actually is becoming a more and more prevalent problem.

[ indistinct conversation ] CATHERINE: It can be like entering a library and finding that someone is talking at full voice, and it just seems like they're breaking the social contract, that there shouldn't be this sort of loud interruption, that this is a space meant for quiet, but for the person talking at full voice who maybe doesn't know any better, they're just seeing what they see as the rightful use of the space.

Having music out here, you can have it loud.

No one's out here telling you no.

No one's out here being upset about it.

You can just listen to music and just laugh and have a good time.

And we have laughed so hard, it's not even... MIKE: In the United States, we really do have a problem of hot springs being viewed as recreation-based, and then going further than that, party, place to get drunk, a view that a lot of, especially in the Northwest, that these hot springs are unmanaged, unregulated free-for-alls.

And then when you look at European spas or Turkish baths or New Zealand hot springs, these have cultures that are based on wellness and communing with nature.

[ birds chirping ] When you look at hot springs in Japan, there is a culture.

It is communing with nature.

It is not viewed with, "Let's go get drunk, let's blare some music, and let's tag something."

I mean, that's-- That would be outrageous in Japan.

Intrigued by Mike's comment that the problems at Bagby would never happen in the hot springs of Japan, I wanted to learn more from a Japanese perspective.

So I met up with Aki Nakanishi.

I think it's part of Japanese indigenous belief system that deity or spirits or gods, if you like to call them, they exist everywhere, especially out in nature.

You are not always being watched, per se, but you have to be mindful of something other than yourself or bigger than yourself.

So it naturally becomes the place of communal respect.

Even if you don't see people in sight at that specific moment in time, there will be others coming later on.

It sounds like a very simple realization, but put into practice, it just means more courteous kind of community.

[ indistinct conversation ] LARRY MILLER: I think that's the big difference right there.

You're coming up to party or you're coming up to renew your soul.

The partiers are all wearing clothes.

[ laughs ] Like other wilderness hot springs, Bagby was once a place where folks would connect to nature by soaking au natural, and up until very recently, guidebooks and websites noted that "clothing-optional" was the norm.

But now, it seems you will only see swimsuits.

And this has caused confusion to newcomers to Bagby.

MAN: We are inclined to be more in the natural... Like, not wear our clothes, but I think we read that you needed to?

I wondered if I was witnessing a generational shift when it comes to swimsuits, but I met some younger soakers who had actually come seeking a skinny dip.

I have a confession.

Yeah.

We actually were coming up here because Emma's never skinny dipped before.

I was like, "We should probably bring swimsuits in case that's the vibe."

We'll find some other more secluded place to... WOMAN: We're going to give you your skinny dip.

...complete the skinny dip.

You're going to have it!

[ all laugh ] This social shift to swimsuits might not seem like a big deal, but some see it as more than skin deep-- rather, losing an integral part of the wilderness hot-springs experience and, at heart, representing a matter of respect.

MONA: A guy and his girl came to my door and he goes, "Is it clothing-optional?"

I said, "Heck yeah, it's closing-optional."

He goes, "Do you wear a swimsuit?"

I go, "Why would I wear a swimsuit?

It's clothing-optional!"

And he goes, "Well, why would you do that?"

And I go, "Well, I think it's important that you can be in an environment with somebody who's naked and not have to worry about sexual actions or sexual conversation and just be natural and normal."

Because once you can learn to accept yourself and other people can learn to accept others, then, you know, it becomes a much more giving environment.

The switch to swimsuits, some say, is caused by the simple fact of more crowds and that cell phones are always present.

But more than mere modesty, some worry that the loss of nude bathing represents a fundamental shift away from nature and towards an increasingly urbanized, digital experience.

WOMAN: We are going to Bagby Hot Springs.

MAN: Bagby Hot Springs.

WOMAN: Bagby Hot Springs.

WOMAN: Bagby Hot Springs is a two-hour drive from... WOMAN: Hot-spring ready!

MAN: We're at Bagby springs!

WOMAN: I've seen it on TikTok before, like people like, "Hey, like, come hike this place, there's cool hot springs," and stuff like that.

I found it researching just on Pinterest because that's what I use for everything.

[ chuckles ] We found this on TikTok, and I was like, "Yes, I would love to be in, like, a public bath with other people."

[ both laugh ] [ overlapping chattering ] WOMAN: They didn't show the waiting and stuff like that.

Yeah, that's the side they don't show online.

We've been in line for, like, I don't know, like almost two hours, I assume, yeah.

CATHERINE: If a place is too accessible, if it's so well known that people are going there constantly and it's just a stream of cars or a stream of people going in, there's an issue of overuse and being loved to death.

As Bagby reopens under the leadership of Mike and Tamarah, there's renewed hope.

But if there is a lesson to be learned from the past, it is that Bagby will take more than fixing buildings and picking up trash.

So whether it's about camera use or nudity or tagging or litter, there's going to be rules that-- where people believe that they're doing it the right way and that other people are doing it the wrong way, and there'll be people butting up against each other.

And hopefully that ultimately can be refined in a set of rules and understandings that can be created for these spaces.

How do we find the balance between not destroying the thing we've come to enjoy and cherishing it and benefiting from that without taking from it so much that it loses its power and its ability for other generations and other people to also enjoy it?

Ultimately, sustaining Bagby will require the users to make a collective effort to embrace a code of ethics and common etiquette.

And if that happens, the hot springs can offer what they always promised: rejuvenation of body and spirit.

And Oregon will regain one of its most special natural places.

MONA: It's important if you can stay within those lines and love being here enough to care for it so people can see it the way it needs to be seen, then, yeah, this place could really make it.

[ ♪♪♪ ] [ birds chirping ] [ water flowing ] Major support for Oregon Field Guide is provided by... Additional support provided by... and the following... and contributing members of OPB and viewers like you.