The Armour Hotel in Red Boiling Springs still offers mineral baths.
Before automobiles, people in Tennessee would spend weeks at a time at small resort hotels, most of which were located near natural springs. There they would relax, read, play croquet, and drink the mineral waters.
In the late 1800s and the early 1900s, Tennessee had about eighty of these hotels, such as Oliver Springs in Anderson County, Tate Springs in Grainger County and Raleigh Springs in Shelby County.
The Thomas House in Red Boiling Springs is supposedly haunted — at least several television shows claim it is.
All of these spring hotels are gone — except for two — and those two remaining spring hotels happen to both be in the Macon County community of Red Boiling Springs.
In Red Boiling Springs you can still stay at an old room at a historic hotel, still sit on the hotel front porch rocking chair, still eat family-style dinners with other guests, and even still taking a bath in mineral water.
In fact, one of the remaining natural springs hotels — the Thomas House — is reportedly haunted!
With its long covered porch, the Donoho Hotel, built in 1916, looked like many of the resort hotels that used to exist all over Tennessee
As recently as November 2025, there were three old fashioned mineral springs hotels in Red Boiling Springs.
The Donoho Hotel burns down on Nov. 12, 2025
But in that month, the Donoho Hotel burned down.
Click here to read more about Red Boiling Springs’ hotels.
If you look carefully at this 1900 map of Macon County and the counties around it, you will notice that Macon has no river AND no railroad.
Also: Macon County has old resort hotels, but it is interesting to reflect on what the county does NOT have.
Macon County is one of the few counties in Tennessee that has never had a railroad line.
Macon County also has no river.
Therefore, Macon County has historically been a very isolated place.
Winding Stairs
One thing Macon County does have, however, is a very underrated trail and waterfall. It is called Winding Stairs, and it is located only a few hundred yards from the Macon County Courthouse in Lafayette.
Come check it out!
Here is the Macon County Courthouse.
