State Bath House

The Wyoming State Bath House, located in Hot Springs State Park in Thermopolis, was built in 1966–1967 to replace an earlier bathhouse built in 1922. Its modernist design was a dramatic departure from the previous neoclassical building that featured a columned temple front and symmetrical side wings.

For the new bathhouse, Casper-based father and son architectural team Krusmark and Krusmark designed a simple stacked-stone building with a two-story central atrium containing an interior hot springs pool, flanked by low, one-story wings housing men’s and women’s dressing rooms. The long narrow blocks of rock-faced sandstone laid in irregular courses give an overall horizontal impression. The low-pitched gable roof appears to float over the glazed north and south end walls of the atrium, supported by a single broad pier at the center of the facade that hides a glazed entry hall accessed from the east. Inside, a small reception area occupies the front of the atrium, with a floor-to-ceiling glass wall separating this area from the interior hot springs pool. The interior is well lit by the window walls. The floor and lower portion of the walls are tiled. From the pool area, visitors can access the dressing rooms and the outdoor pool.

Hot Springs State Park was created in 1897 from former Indian reservation lands purchased by the federal government from the Eastern Shoshone. The federal government deeded one square mile of its 100-square-mile purchase to the State of Wyoming for a state park, and opened the rest to settlement. The park once had at least six hotels and sanatoria, and was a popular place to “take the waters.” Today, visitors can still enjoy several different hot springs pools as well as hiking, biking, and camping. The State Bath House is the only state-run hot springs facility in the park.