As we begin 2025, may the roads you travel be as serene and navigable (until hit with storms, that is!) as depicted in this real photo postcard from perhaps the 1930s and which is simply titled "La Vida Springs. Scene." The postally unused card is taken from Carbon Canyon Road in Brea on the Orange County side of the Canyon looking east toward Chino and San Bernardino County.
Behind trees at the left or north side of the road is a structure that was part of the La Vida Mineral Springs resort, which opened around 1915 and, in various configurations over the next several decades, included a bottling plant (to the left foreground and out of view), motel, café, baths, playground and more. Among its regular customers were Jews who'd been accustomed to going to hot mineral baths in Europe along with locals looking for a good soothing soaking.
As suburbanization spread rapidly around it, La Vida slowly lost business and fewer of its amenities survived. The motel burned in the late 1980s and all that was left by the turn of this century was the restaurant before that finally closed in the early 2000s. Over subsequent years, overgrowth all but concealed any visual aspects, though the 2008 wildfire exposed much of it when the area was scorched.
Today, there are a few remnants, most notably part of a storage tank at the mouth of a small canyon where the previous post, showing an image from the same set as this one, briefly discussed the origins of the hot water—this still exists, though it is on private property. Sections of sidewalk, concrete bases for bridges and other bits are also still there, as are some of the eucalyptus trees that existed a century or so ago.
If you missed a pair of talks on La Vida given in 2024 to the Orange County Historical Society and Chino Hills Historical Society, there are a couple of upcoming presentations: on Thursday evening, 23 January for the Covina Valley Historical Society and on Thursday evening, 6 March for the Yorba Linda Public Library. The website for the Covina group has a postponed October talk on its events page, but the upcoming talk should be there soon. Similarly, the Yorba Linda library site does not have the talk on its calendar yet, but look for it anytime now.
