Crazy Water

Famous Mineral Water Company

City Engineers in Marlin, Texas were trying to find good drinking water for the growing town in 1892. They found a site where they were sure they would find water and began drilling into the black dirt. They hit water alright, but it was not the good drinking water they sought. What came gushing up was a hot, ugly yellow colored water that smelled bad and tasted worse. The disappointed engineers went looking for another site and the people of Marlin were still thirsty.

A couple of weeks later, a young man came into the office of the Marlin Democrat, the local newspaper. Looking "sick and despairing" and obviously suffering from "a loathsome disease," he called upon the sympathy of the paper and the people of the town for help as he had not a penny to his name. Several of the townspeople, not having the amount of sympathy the young man was hoping for, brought him a barrel of the foul smelling, hot water so he could take a bath. A few other townspeople, a bit more charitable, provided him with food so he decided to stay for a while, sleeping at night under a tree in a park and bathing in the barrel of water.

Much to everyone's surprise, five weeks later, he was proclaimed healed! The nasty water everyone hated turned out to be the town's ticket to fame and riches. Within a few weeks of word getting out about the miraculous healing waters, Marlin became one of the country's hottest health destinations. People came from all over the United States and even other countries to "take the waters" and the town benefited handsomely.

The town that benefited the most from discovering "healing waters" though was Mineral Wells, about 150 miles northwest of Marlin. A farmer named J. A. Lynch had drilled a well in 1880 which had come in with the same hot, foul-smelling water found later in Marlin. Mr. Lynch's wife didn't want the water to go to waste so she decided to bath in the hot water and drink what she could stand. In a few weeks, her rheumatism was healed! However, these waters were nothing more than a locally known phenomena until Billy Wiggins drilled on land he owned next to Lynch's.

Wiggins hit the same kind of water and began testing it. He discovered it contained significant amounts of lithium, the same chemical widely used today to treat bipolar disorders. Wiggins saw business opportunity in the water and began to advertise the healing properties of what he called "Crazy Water." He claimed his Crazy Water cured "constipation, high blood pressure, rheumatism, arthritis, kidney problems, liver problems, autointoxication, bad complexion, excess acidity and any other ailments of a more serious nature." With claims like that, people began flocking to Mineral Wells and Crazy Water became the most famous water since fire water. Often there were more than 3,000 people paying to camp on the Wiggins and Lynch property around the wells and paying 10 cents a glass for the water. Soon, Wiggins opened the Crazy Water hotel and quickly became rich. By the mid-1890's, Mineral Wells had 400 commercial wells all selling their own healing waters. By 1910, over 150,000 visitors a year came to Mineral Wells. The town's 46 hotels and boarding houses were constantly fully booked.

Site of the original Crazy Water Well

In 1904, one of the afflicted who came to take the waters was Ed Dismuke. He had been told there was no cure for his stomach ailments, but after a few weeks of drinking Crazy Water daily, his ailments vanished. Ed then established the Famous Mineral Water Company and purchased the Crazy Water wells from Wiggins. Ed built a pavilion next to the original Crazy Water and then built a luxury hotel which housed the thousands of people who came for the Crazy Water treatment.

At its height, the Famous Mineral Water Company was earning over $3,000,000 a year (more than $4,100,000 in 2017 dollars), but by the mid-1930's, the mineral water craze began to fade as the Depression severely reduced the number of visitors who had money to make the trip. To make up for the lost revenue, the company began to sell Crazy Water Crystals, the dehydrated minerals found in the water. The packaged crystals were sold in drugstores around the country - "With a teaspoon of crystals in a glass of tap water, you can enjoy the health benefits of Crazy Water in your own home!" The advertising was done on the "Crazy Water Crystals Radio Show" broadcast across the nation on the Mutual Network. Trouble was brewing though. Using the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, the government began cracking down on the claims made by producers of mineral water. Fearing the Crazy Water Crystals Radio Show would be shut down, the company quickly moved to broadcast over an extremely powerful station in Mexico just south of the border.

World War II came along and with severe gas rationing and the government's attention to mineral water claims, over 90% of all mineral water companies went out of business by 1943. One company that managed to hold on though was Famous Mineral Water. Almost 60 years after being told he would soon die from his stomach problems, Ed Dismuke passed away on November 6, 1957 at age 97 after falling and breaking his hip. He continued to promote the mineral water's healing properties until the end, claiming he had never needed to see a doctor after beginning his daily routine of drinking the water.

Ed's widow sold The Famous Mineral Water Company shortly after his death. Over the years, the company went through a succession of owners until the current owners, Scott and Carol Elder purchased it in 2012. The only surviving mineral water company in Texas, it is now celebrating over 100 years in operation and bottles of Crazy Water are being sold in a number of select locations around the country. If you want to "take the waters" at the source in person, simply travel to the company's headquarters at 209 N.W. 6th Street in Mineral Wells and they'll be happy to sell you as much as you want.