Marble Springs

The Rev. P. P. Bowen, a Baptist minister, found the springs on the south bank of Old Fort Bayou about 1852 and built marble baths and a boarding house beside them. The Ocean Springs Hotel, built by Dr. William Austin and named for the waters, carried guests there by carriage three times a day. An 1893 physician judged the water mildly saline, with iron and sulfur, and useful against stubborn skin diseases. In June 1896 the owners, Schmidt and Ziegler of New Orleans, sold Marble Springs to the city for one dollar. The hotel burned in 1905.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Walter Anderson Museum of Art — 0.5 mi
  A museum in downtown Ocean Springs built around the artist who rowed to Horn Island to paint, with his 1952 murals of Iberville's 1699 landing and the Seven Climates of the town.
• Maritime & Seafood Industry Museum — 2.6 mi
  A Point Cadet museum on Biloxi's oyster, shrimp and schooner past, from the packing houses and the shrimpers' unions to the Vietnamese families who rebuilt the industry.
• Ohr-O'Keefe Museum of Art — 3.2 mi
  Frank Gehry's pavilions on the Biloxi waterfront, built around the pottery of George Ohr, the self-styled Mad Potter, and the rebuilt Pleasant Reed House.
• Biloxi Lighthouse — 4.8 mi
  A cast-iron tower lit in 1848 on the Biloxi beachfront, kept by women for most of its first century and still in service after Camille and Katrina.

More markers nearby

• Carter-Calloway House — 0.2 mi
• Mary C. O'Keefe Cultural Center — 0.4 mi
• Ocean Springs — 0.8 mi
• Charnley-Norwood House (Bon Silene) — 1.9 mi