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[The Baker Hotel at Night]
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This picture shows the Baker--in its great days--at night. According to William O. Gross, Jr. ("Mineral wells, Texas: A Sampler, 1997) the hotel is properly named "Hotel Mineral Wells", the name "Baker" refers to the Baker Hotel Corporation of San Antonio, Texas, which operated nine hotels at the time. Legend has it that a female guest jumped to her death. Her ghost is supposed to be resident in the building, but substantial evidence for the existence of the ghost remains to this date [2014] lacking. A legend on the front of the photograph states that it was colorized by A. F. Weaver in 1940.
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[The Building of Camp Wolters]
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An automobile--presumably of the late 1930's--is parked by a building in the process of being built. Workmen may be seen at the site. A legend under the original reads: "Buildings seem to literally spring from the earth when the construction of the then Camp Wolters began in November, 1940. The camp was completed in less than four months and became the nation's largest infantry Replacement Training Center. Construction cost was approximately $14,200,000."
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[The Crazy Crystal Bottling Plant]
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A picture of the interior of the Crazy Bottling Plant, ladies are shown bottling Crazy Fiz, a copyrighted beverage created by infusing cooled mineral water with carbon dioxide. The men shown here appear to be checking the process in preparation for the bottling of the Crazy Fiz, while the ladies bottle and crate the finished product for shipment. Note the plant's scrupulous cleanliness, and the fact that all employees are dressed in white.
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[The Crazy Hotel Pavilion]
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A handwritten note on the back of the picture identifies this as "Crazy Hotel Pavilion 1940 Cigar Stand and Shine Stand." Please notice Leon Cross, the "Shoe-shine boy", who operated the stand for years, in the white shirt to the left of the Shine Stand. This pavilion is off the hotel lobby, behind and west of the elevators of the second Crazy Hotel. A fire started March 15, 1925, in the drugstore next to the bath house of the first Crazy Hotel which adjoined the Crazy Flats (second Crazy Pavilion). The fire destroyed all the businesses in this city block. The second Crazy Hotel opened in 1927, and incorporated all of the previous enterprises into one building covering the entire city block. The drinking bar, from which Boyce Ditto served mineral water for many years, is at the opposite end of the pavilion, left of the shoe-shine and Cigar Stand, with its striped awning. In its heyday during the health-spa era of the "City built on Water," the bar served four different strengths of mineral water. The bar is still in existence today although inactive. The mezzanine around the drinking pavilion was lined with offices, primarily those of doctors.
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[Mineral Wells High School]
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This view of Mineral Wells High School, taken from the east in 1940, shows the 1884 "Little Rock School House" (Mineral Wells' first public school) on the north side of the high school. The larger school was built at 101 NW 5th Avenue in 1915. The second high school in Mineral Wells, it still [2008] stands. Three other high schools have been built since the last class graduated from this one in 1955.