Wellness Weekend on Miracle Hill runs Friday, October 16 through Sunday, October 18, spread across ten of the hotels and spas on the hill. Most of the program is what you'd expect from a weekend with "wellness" in the title — breathwork, Pilates, a sound bath, a head-and-foot massage workshop called Good Head and Happy Feet. But one Saturday session is about the thing every one of those ten properties is built on top of. The water gets a talk of its own.

The man with the job title

Dr. Marcus Coplin is a naturopathic doctor and the board president of the Balneology Association of North America. His title within the association is Director of Hydrothermal Medicine, which tells you exactly what he is coming to talk about.

Balneology is the old discipline of mineral water — what's in it, how hot it runs, and what bathing in it has meant to the people who did. The association describes its work as giving mineral-water communities and their stewards "research, education, and resources." Coplin was on its founding board, and he trained internationally at balneology treatment centers, research facilities and hospitals.

His Saturday session, presented with Desert Health, is billed as The Benefits of Miracle Hill Waters: the history, the science and the bathing traditions behind what comes up out of this particular hill, and how it made this a place people come to restore themselves. Take it as an education in a tradition, not a prescription.

Two waters, one fault

Here is why a balneologist would bother with Desert Hot Springs specifically. The town sits on a fault line with a different water on either side of it. To the east, the resort wells pull hot mineral water from their own aquifer. To the west lies cold water. What comes out of the town's taps is drawn from a different basin than the resort wells, and that tap water has taken gold at an international water-tasting competition three times.

So the hot water goes into the pools and the cold water comes out of the kitchen sink, and both have their own story. Cabot Yerxa used the hot water on this hill, and cold water a short walk from his house, more than a hundred years ago. The people who lived here before him knew about the water long before that.

The association noticed too. Back in 2014, its own newsletter named Desert Hot Springs as one of six geothermal spa towns worth the attention. The town has been on the association's map for at least twelve years. This October, its president will be standing on the hill.

A town building a calendar

Desert Hot Springs used to hand you a key and a towel. Now the Wellness Weekend is handing you a schedule.

Last September brought the first Greater Palm Springs Spa Month, with a floating sound bath at Azure Palm on its program. In January, the Miracle Hill Spa Tour opened thirteen spas and more than eighty activities to visitors and sold out. Now there's Wellness Weekend, with a lecture on the water itself sitting in the middle of it. The city's own strategic plan for 2025 through 2027 talks about protecting the spa zone, looking at incentives to revitalize the older spas, and building wellness partnerships, which is the sort of document a city writes once it has decided what it wants to be.

In recent seasons the town has started building around its aquifer — talks, tours, a festival weekend — and giving people a reason to stay past the soak. Now the people whose whole field is mineral water are showing up for it.

If you're going

The talk is scheduled for Saturday, October 17. Times and locations for every session go out to ticket holders after purchase, so you'll learn where to find Dr. Coplin once you're in. The weekend is 21 and over. Your pass covers the programming. Soaking is discounted for pass holders but not included, which, after a talk about the water, is the one thing you'll want to go and do.

You've been in the water. On Saturday, you can find out what it is. Buy your tickets today before they're sold out!