A Taylor Swift-tinged moment from tiny Lava Hot Springs
LAVA HOT SPRINGS, Idaho — The Kats! Bureau at this writing is the Royal Hotel & Pizzeria, on the corner of Center and Main in this tiny resort town.
This little hotel was built in 1914, and is one of the first commercial buildings in Lava Hot Springs. Royal is a state historic landmark. The rooms have not been open to guests in four decades. but the business has operated as tasty pizza joint under the same family’s ownership since 1984.
Royal offers an amazing dessert, Snickers Pizza. This is baked pizza dough with Snickers ingredients, milk chocolate, crushed peanuts, caramel and served warm. It has to be one of greatest desserts in the Intermountain West. I tried to find this confection on the menu and my server said, “It’s not there. It’s kind of a secret thing.”
Lava has apparently embraced the Vegas practice of the “secret” menu item everyone knows about.
The young man who guided me through the menu is an online college student from Ogden, Utah, named Quinn Johnston.
He told me he’s studying computer science. I told him I am studying the science of righeousness in Vegas.
He asked if I’d been to the Sphere, further evidence the bulbous wonder has piqued interest in even the most remote burg.
I said I had, and that all of Lava Hot Springs could fit inside.
Quinn then mentioned he’s seen Taylor Swift at Allegiant Stadium on March 24, the first of Swift’s two sold-out shows. “I was at that show,” I said. “Sixty-thousand people going nuts. Wild night.”
“It was!” Quinn grinned. “I proposed to my girlfriend at that show!”
“Of course you did,” I said. “Only in Vegas.”
Alexis Christensen (now Johnston) said yes to that proposal in Allegiant’s upper level. Bedlam ensued, as Quinn’s TikTok video shows. That video has drawn 21.6 million views, 4.7 million likes and 235,000 shares on the platform.
The couple were married in October.
It’s another slice of magic culled from Lava Hot Springs, where I spend quality time with Dr. George “Daddy Kats” Katsilometes every holiday season. I’ve posted Rockwellian-fashioned columns from the home of the family business, Lava Hot Springs Inn.
Lava Hot Springs is the type of town where time stands still, even reaching back a century. The town’s population is not blossoming, slipping from 406 (or 409, depending on which “insider” you source) five years ago to 358 today.
There is development, but from outside investors building residences as Airbnb properties. We have occasional visitors loping in and out of Lava. But those owners are not residing in town, and those booking Airbnbs of course are not staying at such venerable lodges as Riverside, Old Home, Lava Lava Spa Motel or our family’s Inn.
As readers of this column have known, the Lava Hot Springs Inn is about a 30-mile jaunt from Pocatello. Take I-15 to Highway 30, head east at the McCammon exit, and you’ll find the majestic Lava Hot Spring sign at arching over the town’s entrance.
The Inn’s primary, brick building was finished in 1924. The project originally served the region as the Lava Hot Springs Sanitarium, intended to treat military veterans. From 1957-‘85, the structure functioned as a nursing home until it was closed and fenced. Dad took it over in 1988. He soon drilled to strike natural mineral water (Idaho gold, as far as we’re concerned).
The entire town shuffled to to the property to check out this high-rising, life-affirming geyser of steam.
The Inn is well-known among ghost adventurers, after it was featured on an episode of Zak Bagans’ “Ghost Adventures” a few years ago. Bagans famously proclaimed the old hospital, with its Room No. 13 and decades of medical procedures, is ““a nuclear reactor for spirits.”
A video illustration in the episode shows a stream of ghosts rising out of the fountain in the 103-degree main pool. I have spent a lot of time in that pool and never experienced anything more unsettling than the Inn’s black cat, MeowMeow, licking the water .
That water is capped at around 100 degrees. Three wells pump out more than 600,000 gallons a day. Water is also sent to the Portneuf River, which runs through Lava and past the Inn, and eventually into the Snake River.
We’ve been drinking the mineral water from the Inn’s wells for years. We make tea with it. It’s been bottled on a very small scale ever since Dad struck water on the property. It’s been sold mostly to guests at the Inn and to visitors to Lava.
But Lava Hot Springs Mineral Water is now being produced at a wide scale, captured at the site, bottled at a facility in Pocatello, sold on Amazon (Lava’s made the big time) and being distributed around the country.
Over the years we have collected the memories and magic of this place. We have finally bottled at least a sample of the Lava vibe. With mineral water from the heart of the Earth, we toast newlyweds Quinn and Alexis, and wish peace and love from the magical hot springs.
John Katsilometes’ column runs daily in the A section. His “PodKats!” podcast can be found at reviewjournal.com/podcasts. Contact him at jkatsilometes@reviewjournal.com. Follow @johnnykats on X, @JohnnyKats1 on Instagram.
