Mike Watts

Historic Hotels of America® is pleased to announce that Cindy and Mike Watts were honored as recipients of the 2025 Historic Hotels of America Lifetime Achievement Award this October. The award recognizes the significant contributions of Cindy and Mike Watts as owners, preservationists, and philanthropists dedicated to revitalizing historic places, including Castle Hot Springs in Morristown, Arizo...

Washington, D.C. – September 29, 2025 – Historic Hotels of America® is pleased to announce that Cindy and Mike Watts will be honored as recipients of the 2025 Historic Hotels of America Lifetime Achievement Award this October. The award recognizes the significant contributions of Cindy and Mike Watts as owners, preservationists, and philanthropists dedicated to revitalizing historic places, includ...

The market for hot springs resorts is heating up in the United States. Hospitality and real estate companies are investing in new and upgraded facilities, as they vie for a larger segment of the growing pool of wellness tourists. The demand for thermal/mineral springs tourism worldwide will increase 14.3 percent a year through 2027, according to the 2023 Global Wellness Economy Monitor. The repor...

Contractors and engineers can be considered magicians, as they do the near impossible by making water run uphill. This feat is apparent locally with the Central Arizona Project, which carries Colorado River water from Lake Havasu and brings it upgradient to destinations including Phoenix and Tucson. This issue of Arizona Contractor & Community will focus on water and, specifically, the Colorado Ri...

In 1896, Castle Hot Springs' first guests braved a five-hour stagecoach ride to reach this remote swath of Sonoran Desert at the base of the Bradshaw Mountains. Since then, the resort went on to welcome Gilded Age holidaymakers like the Vanderbilts, Astors, Pews and Rockefellers, and has hosted everything from the WWII-era convalescence of a Purple Heart-decorated JFK to the post-lockdown birthday...

In a remote desert canyon in the Bradshaw Mountains, about ninety minutes north of Phoenix, Arizona, some 200,000 gallons of clear, velvety hot water pours out of fissures in the rock every day at a place known as Castle Hot Springs. If you were a Yavapai Indian, the hot springs were sacred, the place to name babies. If you were a prospector, the springs were salvation, more valuable than gold. If...

By Joanna Dodder Nellans Nestled at the southern tip of the Bradshaw Mountains amidst towering saguaros and jagged sunburned rocks, a true Sonoran Shangri-La once existed. It was the winter home of Gilded Age titan families including the Vanderbilts and Rockefellers, who spent their mornings on horseback with local ranching families such as the Champies before relaxing in the natural hot springs...

A secret hot spot enjoyed by native Arizonan tribes for centuries, the storied site of Castle Hot Springs has since welcomed the U.S. social set to its warm waters in the rugged Bradshaw Mountains. Responsible for restoring the remote resort to its former glory, owner Mike Watts has reimagined an off-grid oasis for a new era. The adventures of the Arizona desert never run dry at Castle Hot Spring...

In January 1945, a 28-year-old Massachusetts naval lieutenant began a three-month rehabilitation at Castle Hot Springs, about 50 miles northwest of Phoenix in the Bradshaw Mountains. Here at the luxury resort for American aristocracy – the Vanderbilts, Pews, Rockefellers and Wrigleys – he recovered from a back injury sustained while commanding PT-109 in World War II. John F. Kennedy convalesced u...

Tucked away in the shadow of the rugged Bradshaw Mountains, not far from Lake Pleasant, Castle Hot Springs once boasted a dazzling guest list — from Rockefellers to Carnegies to a Kennedy. Yet for 40 years, the resort sat empty, frequented only by a caretaker and countless owners whose grand plans for the site fizzled. The place boasts the kind of rugged beauty that can't be found at urban resort...