Mercey Hot Springs (formerly Mercy Hot Springs) is an unincorporated community and historical hot springs resort in the Little Panoche Valley of

Fresno County Fresno County (), officially the County of Fresno, is a county located in the central portion of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 Census, the population was 1,008,654. The county seat is Fresno, the fifth-most populous city in Cali ...

, central

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...

, about west-southwest of

Fresno Fresno () is a major city in the San Joaquin Valley of California, United States. It is the county seat of Fresno County and the largest city in the greater Central Valley region. It covers about and had a population of 542,107 in 2020, maki ...

History

Historically the hot springs were used by Native Americans. Local native peoples introduced the springs to John Merci, a sheep herder and early European settler; he later changed the spelling of his name to Mercy. The springs were discovered by settlers on the Arroyo de Pannochita in 1848. During the California Gold Rush it was known as the Aguaje Panochita. This watering place was used by mesteneros as holding point for their captured mustangs. It was a station on La Vereda del Monte used by the

Five Joaquins Gang The Five Joaquins were a mid-19th-century outlaw gang in California which, according to the state legislature, was led by five men, identified as follows: "... the five Joaquins, whose names are Joaquin Murrieta, Joaquin Ocomorenia, Joaquin Vale ...

driving their horses southward to their hideout on the Arroyo de Cantua.

Frank F. Latta Frank Forrest Latta (1892–1983), was a California historian and ethnographer of the Yokuts people. He also wrote histories of the early European-American settlement of the San Joaquin Valley. Early life Frank Forrest Latta was the son of Presbyte ...

, JOAQUIN MURRIETA AND HIS HORSE GANGS, Bear State Books, Santa Cruz, California. 1980. The later resort opened after 1900. In 1912, Mercy sold the property to Frederick Bourn, who was a real estate developer from San Francisco. Bourn built cabins and a hotel at the hot springs. In the mid-1930s the hotel burned in a fire, and a bathhouse and restaurant was built to replace the hotel. Later a campground and swimming pool was added.

Hot springs water profile

The natural hot mineral water emerges from one of the sources at , and from an artesian well at 110 °F.

Facilities

There are cabins at the hot springs available to rent, tent spaces and RV campsites. There is a pool large enough for swimming that is fed from an artesian hot well, and several bathtub soaking pools. A bathing area is located along South Fork Little Panoche Creek and the Little Panoche Road ( Fresno County Road J1) located at the western edge of Fresno County. A motel is located about ten driving miles west of

Interstate 5 Interstate 5 (I-5) is the main north–south Interstate Highway on the West Coast of the United States, running largely parallel to the Pacific coast of the contiguous U.S. from Mexico to Canada. It travels through the states of Californi ...

. The facility is along the San Andreas Rift Zone.

Location

Mercey Hot Springs is located in the Little Panoche Valley, the facility includes natural

hot spring A hot spring, hydrothermal spring, or geothermal spring is a spring produced by the emergence of geothermally heated groundwater onto the surface of the Earth. The groundwater is heated either by shallow bodies of magma (molten rock) or by c ...

s. Little Panoche Road was formerly part of a stagecoach route. The ZIP Code of the settlement is 93622, and the community is inside

area code 559 Area code 559 is a California telephone area code that was split from area code 209 on November 14, 1998. It covers the central San Joaquin Valley in central California, serving the counties of Fresno, Madera, Kings, and Tulare—an area large ...

. It lies at an elevation of .

References

External links

BLM web page for Panoche Hills.
{{authority control Hot springs of California Resorts in California San Joaquin Valley Bodies of water of Fresno County, California La Vereda del Monte