By: Robin Ford Wallace, Reporter

The justice system is still dealing with fallout from a recent attempt to develop the south end of Dade County. Following an FBI investigation, federal criminal charges were filed in May against two players in the no-money-down, no-monthly-payment financing scheme used to sell lots at the Preserve at Rising Fawn, and a trial is slated to begin in February. Meanwhile, Dade County’s efforts to collect an estimated $500,000 in back taxes at the failed resort continue to be thwarted by the ongoing bankruptcy proceedings of TAS Properties, a company associated with developer Southern Group.       

But as pointed out recently by Dade County Executive and Commission Ted Rumley, incidentally a local history buff, the Preserve was hardly Rising Fawn’s maiden voyage into luxury resort ventures. Rumley has microfiche copies of advertisements from the early days of the 20th century for a purported Rising Fawn health mecca called Klondike Springs.

“To all those seeking a place where they can find rest from care and business, and where they can spend a time free from the heat and dust of the Towns and Cities, and also those suffering from general debility, and stomache dificuilties as the results of Kidney and Liver troubles and over work,” begins a creatively-spelled sales pitch headed Jan. 4, 1907, and goes on from there.

“People have always been scammers, land scammers and all,” said Rumley. “This is one of the first ones that ever happened in Dade County.”

Rumley says the old ads come from the Georgia Archives near Jonesboro, where he loves to root around when he’s in the Atlanta area for a meeting. “I found this about 15 or 20 years ago,” he said. “I made copies for people who didn’t believe it had actually happened.”

If you’ve lived in Dade all your life and have never heard of Klondike Springs, it’s not because you haven’t been paying attention. “It never existed,” said Rumley. 

Oh, the springs existed, said Rumley, and they’re still there, on the west side of I-59. “You go halfway up Hatfield Road and you turn on Old Deerhead Cove Road. It goes back in the ridges there,” said Rumley. “The spring comes out of the foot of Puddin’ Ridge.” 

But, he added, it’s never been called Klondike Springs and there’s nothing special about it as far as anybody knows. “It’s just water,” he said. “Nobody drinks it.”

According to page after page of glowing testimonials from 1905-‘08, though, that’s a crying shame, because the mineral waters of Klondike Springs cure everything from indigestion to liver disease, even lameness. Their miraculous properties were discovered – and subsequently marketed – by a (northern) Civil War veteran named R.R. Wilkinson.

“I was in the army during the war of 1861 and 65 and contracted disease of the Liver and Kidneys which have affected me more or less ever since,” wrote Wilkinson in his own testimonial. “In December 1901 I had a severe attact.”

Spellchecker had not yet been invented in 1907.

Wilkinson goes on to state that he had been advised to come south and try the healing waters of Sulfur Springs. “When I arrived there I was so weak that I could only walk a short distance before I would have to rest,” wrote the piteous invalid.

Sulfur Springs, testified Wilkinson, improved him only moderately. Fortunately: “While there I became acquainted with Mr. S.B. Austin who told me I had made a mistake, that I should have gone to the Springs near Rising Fawn, Ga., as they were locally noted for their medical properties, and that to his personal knowledge he knew of several wonderful cures they had made.”

So Wilkinson went to Rising Fawn and became another success story. “As soon as I commenced to use the water regularly I found it had a marked effect on the secretions of the Liver and Kidneys,” he wrote. In six weeks, he testified, he was a new man, with a hearty appetite and a stomach capable of “assimulating” food. 

“My bowels which had been very irregular for years became regular,” he wrote, presumably in the interest of full disclosure. “Life instead of being almost a burden to me is now a pleasure.”

His wife, also a martyr to stomach ailments, was similarly cured. So, to believe the ad, were tourists from Florida, Tennessee and Alabama, who all wrote florid testimonials. 

“To whoom it may concern,” begins one from E.L. Brett. “This is to ceertefy that I have used the water from the Klondike Springs owned by Mr. R.R. Wilkinson at Rising Fawn Ga. …”

Brett goes on to “ceertefy” that he received more benefits from the life-giving waters than from any previous medical treatment, but the pertinent words in that passage are “owned by R.R. Wilkinson.” Our lame Civil War vet was by now the proud owner of the miraculous springs.

Not that he intended to hog them: The next part of the ad describes 100 acres of prime springside real estate, all available for immediate purchase. “There is a beautiful location for a Hotel a few rods below the famed Spring where water can be piped all through the building. There are Teraces around and below the Spring sufficient to locate from 50 to 100 cottages,” wrote Wilkinson. “There can be a fine road built to the main road with comparetively small expence.”

He concludes that the tract would be platted the following fall and that “lots will be for sale at a reasonable price.”

Besides the medicinal tourists, the ad includes the names of prominent local citizens who endorsed the venture. These include Allisons, Austins, Cantrells, Curetons, Hales, Frickses, Wootens and Youngs.

But local people were not the targeted buyers for Klondike Springs, said Ted Rumley. “What they did is they went up North and promoted this to people who didn’t know,” he said.    

The proposed resort was never built, said Rumley, and by the time he started asking, practically nobody remembered anything about Klondike Springs. “When I got this, there was still a lot of the old-timers living,” he said. “They said, well, they’d never heard of that before.” 

Rumley isn’t sure who owns the springs now but the owner when he first began investigating was John West, now dead some 15 years. West did know about Klondike Springs. “He laughed,” said Rumley. “He said, ‘Oh, that was just a big con.’ He said he’d heard people mention it years and years and years before that and they just laughed about it.” 

“It was just a big hoax,” concluded Rumley. “I wonder who bit off some of the chunks there when they promoted it.”