The spring discoverer, however, had high hopes. He returned to Cambridge, made his spring more presentable, and advertised in the Cambridge News that he had a natural aid for sufferers. Outlying farmers were the first to take him at his word. The benefit they obtained is said to have been amazing. Soon, Doctor Grey had a tent structure over his spring.
Strangers, some said to be seeking anything as a final hope, joined the ailing farmers and residents. Finally, Doctor Grey was abridged to place a turnstile at the entrance to his spring and to install an organization of two men, one to sell admissions at the turnstile, the other to ladle out the water at a stated price per glass. If some think imagination has run ragged in this account, let it be recorded that a picture of the Grey Springs at about this time is available. It was last published in a Historical Edition of the Enterprise News at Cambridge Springs, dated November the 12th, 1931. There can be no doubt of the tent, the turnstile, the attendants, or the crowd. Moreover, competition immediately advanced into the foreground to become the light of trade.
Across the road, slightly removed from the Grey Springs, the original Magnesia Spring was suddenly discovered. As everybody knows, magnesia is valued in the treatment of many stomach disorders and other ailments, which can be aided very little, if any, by iron water. Other springs were properly discovered, nearly all of them offering different analyses. Hotels and boarding houses were necessary to care for visitors.
The Erie Railroad ran excursions. Doctors set up a technique that involved thorough examination studies and the sittings of water treatments. The old American House and several other hotels soon were doing a land office business.
A group of promoters came in from outside, one of them W.D. Rider, to do the inevitable. A Riverside Hotel was built in 1886, only two years after Doctor Grey returned with his great fate from Arkansas. Only a little imagination is necessary to witness the current theme. Of course, residents could not stand idly by and watch this new spending stream without plunging into it. Houses were built, and many of them were turned over rapidly.
New businesses were opened. The Erie Railroad built a commodious splendid station. (Here is an advertisement.) The finest thing in architecture of the day was the broad area for hotel buses and luggage handling. New streets were mapped and opened.
There is a story that in 1895, the new activities were still going strong, eleven years after Grey's foolishness of 1884. W.D. Rider a natural promoter fell out with his two partners with the Hotel Riverside development. It would be necessary for one of them to buy out the other two and to simplify the operations as bidding, and they further agreed to submit sealed bids to an outside party. The highest bid to take the property. It is further reported that two of the partners were not heavily backed, and the third is supposed to be in the same position. But whether or not two of them bid lower than justified.
Only to find that the third did have a backer and had entered a reasonable offer, he took the property. Baird was the backer. This backer turned out to be William Baird, then of Pittsburgh, who was ready to retire in a comfortable country business—something like a hotel and farm.
William Baird was a bridge builder. In a short time, he had taken over all of the Riverside Hotel and farm, and realizing the natural connection with the Grey Mineral Springs, he was reported to have paid Doctor Grey $60,000 for it. He built a long boardwalk from the hotel to the Spring, which required exercise for the patients, which stands as one of the notable features of the Spa even today.