Sharing Some History of La Vida Mineral Springs With the Orange County Historical Society

by Paul R. Spitzzeri

A prior post here featured, from the Homestead’s collection, a 1920 real photo postcard of La Vida Mineral Springs, a rustic resort located in Carbon Canyon in the Orange County town of Brea, and discussed some of its history. It was mentioned that a follow-up post would be published several months later when a presentation was to be given to the Orange County Historical Society.

That talk was postponed for about a year, but it did take place a couple of days ago, with the discussion covering activities at La Vida from 1915 to the late 1980s, when the resort closed (though the restaurant stayed active for another dozen or so years). We’re finally picking up where we left off with an aspect of the resort that had a fairly long life and broader reach beyond the site with its mineral water bottling operation.

For time immemorial, hot mineral springs have been viewed as conducive to human health, with all manner of benefits attributed to them, including the curing of a myriad number of diseases and chronic problems and they also had spiritual and mystical importance, given their geological origins. While modern medical practice states that hot springs can be efficacious for relieving symptoms skin problems, improving circulation and mental health, including the reduction of stress and improving sleep, and it is interesting to note recent studies about users’ views.

Imbibing mineral water, whether naturally or artificially carbonated, was largely purported to provide the same benefits as soaking, and current thinking among some health-care professionals is that drinking the water can be helpful with gastrointestinal functions, providing iron for those with anemia and calcium for skeletal and bone health, dealing with cardiovascular disease and treating metabolic syndrome.

After a group of Orange County investors acquired La Vida in 1924, one of them, William Newton Miller, eventually assumed ownership of the resort and a significant amount of money was put into a motel, dance hall, bath house, improved facilities for bathing and more, though a flood during the winter of 1926-1927 was reported to have destroyed everything but the hall. Further conversations about flood control included a proposal to build a dam at the mouth of the canyon, followed by consideration of the canyon for a massive dam and reservoir on the San Bernardino County side to store water from the Colorado River Aqueduct project.

In early February 1927, just before the storms arrived that led to the deluge, an announcement was made in the Pomona Bulletin that a local distributor “will deliver the first bottle free to any address in this territory,” this being 5-gallon containers. The piece added that the water’s “chemical qualities are said to be beneficial in relief of many ailments.”

The 3 June 1928 edition of the Santa Ana Register ran an advertisement from the La Vida Mineral Water Company, operated by Charleston A. Kleinman, an attorney and former oil operator with headquarters at Figueroa and 2nd streets in the Bunker Hill neighborhood of downtown Los Angeles, blaring to readers “DO NOT BE DECEIVED!!” and “BEWARE OF IMPOSTORS!!” as they should “Demand La Vida Mineral Water” that was “sold only by exclusive distributors.”

Claiming that “the demand for LA VIDA MINERAL WATER is enormous,” the company boasted that “it is the only health curative water in the country.” Moreover, it asserted many of the thousands who’d sampled the product were cured of such ailments as “auto-intoxication,” bad circulation, gas, gravel stones, indigestion, rheumatism and problems with their bladders, kidney and livers.

It was emphasized that La Vida’s water had almost the same properties as the famed Vichy water of France and was sold at 50 cents a quart, $2 per gallon and $10 for that five-gallon container, these touted as “tremendous” prices. The firm was said to have employed a large fleet of trucks to deliver the product throughout the southern part of the state “and arrangements are now being made to sell this miraculous HEALTH AND CURATIVE WONDER WATER THROUGHOUT THE UNITED STATES.” It closed by offering its motto of “Watch for America’s New Health Drink” under the name of “LA VIDA FIZZ.”

Whether the claims of the multitudes of customers, much less all of those medical conditions that were purported to be treated, had any semblance of reality or not, La Vida was further promoted in newspapers and on radio as shown in a Christmas Day 1929 ad in the Los Angeles Times under the heading of “SWAMPED WITH ORDERS / The Talk of Los Angeles.” Moreover, the firm claimed that “The World’s Greatest Natural Mineral Water [Is] Internationally Indorsed” and that the water “eliminates, counteracts and neutralizes excess acid in the system” asserting that this acid “is the direct or indirect cause of most ailments and physical disorders.”

Averring that La Vida “is a monopoly and has no competition,” the company quoted Dr. William E. Fitch, described as “America’s greatest authority,” though for what was not stipulated, as intoning that “There’s no other water like La Vida in this country.” Also quoted was Dr. H. Baud, said to be a “celebrated physician and one of the greatest medical authorities in France” and who opined that

LA VIDA MINERAL WATER is certainly an excellent mineral water, very active and agreeable to drink. It is particularly recommended in affections of the stomach, liver and biliary canals so that it is wholly comparable to the celebrated French Vichy. The country that possesses it therefore, has, from the medical point of view, a genuine therapeutic treasure.

Readers were encouraged to tune in to radio stations KFWB at 10:30 a.m. or KTM at 2:30 p.m., and others, to hear “Daily Important Health Talks,” as well as to try out the three offerings of La Vida Water, these being natural, carbonated and ginger ale. The ad appeared two months after the crash of the stock market in New York City that ushered in the Great Depression, though the bottle mineral water continued to be sold for decades, until perhaps in the 1960s.

In 1931, the San Bernardino Sun ran advertisements for La Vida offering free one-gallon samples delivered to a reader’s home as well as “An Important Message To Those Who Are Ill” from “The Health Man” that insisted that “thousands of men and women all over California are joining a great new movement to end sickness” and “waging a victorious battle for restored health and strength” with “amazing results” incurred from ingesting the wonder water.

The company was “throwing aside all sham and efforts to mince matters . . . with its message of blunt facts, and of hope and courage.” It went on to note that thousands of “discouraged and disheartened sufferers” who had “tossed in bed, wracked with pain” or couldn’t eat properly were “abundantly fulfilled” after drinking the water. There were yet millions who could find benefit, though, notably, the company emphasized that readers were to consult with physicians for the causes of their ailments and illnesses.

From there, “the work of LA VIDA Mineral Water is not to get at any one spot or organ of the body, but to go throughout the entire system, aiding in the work of normalizing it.” It was not, the firm continued, “a quack remedy, or a ‘cure-all'” and certainly was not intended to address every health problem. Tying La Vida to the centuries-long tradition in Europe of ingesting mineral water, the excess acid situation was noted as core to what the water could do to assist those who drank it. Fitch and European experts from Austria, England, Italy and Slovakia were cited as supporting the claims behind La Vida, with chemist Luigi Francesconi, director of the Institute of General Chemistry at the Royal University at Genoa, Italy, quoted as stating,

LA VIDA has the virtues of such world-famous natural mineral waters as French Vichy and Sardara, virtues which have been confirmed by the experience of thousands of years. Indeed, LA VIDA should possess these virtues even to a higher degree than the Sardara water. LA VIDA mineral water is indicated for many serious or chronic ailments.

There were a variety of flavors in later years including black cherry, “Charley’s Chocolate,” cream, grape, lime, root beer, orange, strawberry and tropical punch among others, and La Vida water, originally bottled on the resort site was later produced in downtown Fullerton and, through franchising, in such northern California cities as Sacramento, San Francisco, and Stockton. It is not known, however, if the aim to distribute throughout the country was anywhere close to being realized.

Occasional legal issues came up, including a late 1929 suit against the firm to incurrent debts, as well as one in 1937 involving a purported breach of contact concerning the distribution of the product and which brought a filing by Miller and his company of criminal charges against the opponent, T.R. Gillenwaters for issuing a bounced check and for conspiracy to defraud.

One of the more interesting court battles involved a 1940 injunction by the Orange County Superior Court ordering La Vida “to cease using the name Hawaiian Punch on one of its soft drinks” after a suit filed by Pacific Citrus Products of Fullerton. That company, owned by Austin Leo, began making Hawaiian Punch and not only successfully secured the injunction but received an interlocutory decree that La Vida was to provide the court an accounting of its profits from illegally using the name of what was generally known at the time as “Leo’s Hawaiian Punch.”

In a 1941 feature of the resort, it was reported that 60,000 gallons at 116 degrees Farenheit flowed from some 10,000 feet under the surface at the time that Miller took over La Vida more than 15 years before and that, with gross sales of $100,000 yearly from sales of water, including “in the East” and “therapeutic medical treatment” through baths, massages and other services. Notably, it was mentioned that Miller, who was an oil driller, found the amount of water after prospecting for black gold.

The article was issued on 4 December, just three days prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and the piece noted that, with the Nazi occupation of most of Europe, mineral water distribution was cut off, so there were opportunities for La Vida to expand. America’s entry in World War II, however, also meant rationing and restrictions that limited what the firm could do with manufacturing and distributing its products. For the flavoring, more than 20 ingredients, principally pure fruit, were used and discussion of the modern equipment used to manufacture the water was included.

The postwar period brought suburbanization in a relentless expansion to north Orange County and La Vida was no longer the remote rural retreat it had been previously. While the baths continued to function, the mineral water side appears to have been ended by the 1960s. Miller and his family operated the resort into the early 1970s, when it was sold to a Japanese investor—that nation also features many hot mineral springs given its geological position as part of the Pacific Rim of Fire that includes much of the western edge of our hemisphere.

A fire in the late 1980s destroyed the motel and the baths were also shuttered during this period, though the café continued to operate with blues, punk and rock concerts held into the first years of our century. For more than two decades, however, the site has been overgrown with few remnants left of the La Vida years, including a hillside water tank, portions of sidewalk, and some of the eucalyptus trees that date back to at least the 1920s. A few local mineral springs resorts, such as Glen Ivy in Corona and the Murrieta Hot Springs, are still with us, however.