The Renovated Hot Springs Hotel at the Center of a Forgotten Border Town’s Reinvention

The sun is setting in San Diego’s Sonoran Desert. A dusty fuchsia hue, the color of bougainvilleas, stretches across the sky. The air smells of spices and sulfur. Less than half a mile to the south, the U.S.-Mexico border wall looms with its tall, rusted slats. A couple emerges from a vintage Argosy trailer—its shell painted "Hotel Check-in"—with sand-colored ceramic mugs in hand. Nearby, the freshly renovated Jacumba Hot Springs Hotel blends in with the desert landscape, its adobe-inspired walls and other hallmarks of Pueblo Revival-and Southwestern-style architecture, like exposed vigas, flanked by palms and a xeriscaped courtyard.

The unincorporated community of Jacumba Hot Springs, situated in the mountains of southeastern San Diego County along old Highway 80, has lived many lives, but this hotel has long been its center. Many millennials born and raised in the region (myself included), know Jacumba as a bit of a ghost town in recent decades. The land was originally inhabited by the Kumeyaay people, who organized their way of life around the area’s geothermal hot springs and their therapeutic properties. It became a popular resort destination when the namesake hotel opened in 1925, drawing wellness tourists and Hollywood stars to the area’s healing hot springs and mineral-rich reservoir. (The proximity to Tijuana, famous during the Prohibition era for its jazz clubs with cheap alcohol, didn’t hurt.) At its peak in the 1930s and ’40s, Jacumba was a thriving community with shops, a dance hall, and a railroad stop. But the opening of Interstate 8 in the ’60s diverted traffic, impacting local businesses, and by 1983, a fire destroyed much of the hotel, marking the beginning of a long chapter of decline for the area.

In 2021, the historic hotel underwent a renovation by real estate entrepreneur Jeff Osborne and interior designers Corbin Winters and Melissa Strukel after Strukel and her partner, David Lampley, came across the property while road-tripping during the pandemic lockdown. The three friends turned business partners, who work under the name We Are Human Kind, purchased the 20th-century hotel in late 2020, along with Jacumba’s defunct gas station, man-made lake, and several cabins and storefronts, and moved to the town to commence a yearslong overhaul. "The intention was always to be mindful of the community," says Osborne.

They started with the hotel: its restaurant and bar, its three hot springs pools, and its 2o guest rooms, now connected by breezeways and regraded dirt paths. The overall look of the hotel features a recognizably millennial take on desert design—the type of Bedouin meets Mission Revival and Pueblo style that’s now the go-to for Airbnbs in arid climates, as well as hotels that brand themselves as "oases" and appeal in equal measure to Tulum-frequenting influencers and the Burning Man set. In the rooms, vigas (wooden beams used in traditional adobe architecture) and stone floors coexist with shiny brass accents like snake door handles and glossy, textured pastel tiles. California en plein air paintings of desert and chaparral landscapes fill the restaurant walls. In the courtyard, there are hanging brass bells that Winters sourced from Arcosanti, Paolo Soleri’s Arizona desert utopia, which today attracts some millennial and Gen Z travelers interested in architectural (and Instagrammable) landmarks.

The 1970s-style bar, called the "exotic desert hideaway" (a self-aware, quippy nod to the hotel flip), goes with a more tiki-inspired aesthetic that even leans Gothic. There are dark leather banquettes and wood millwork that add to the moody grotto feel of the dimly lit room. The decor also includes Moroccan-style brass lamps and vintage nudie oil paintings that Strukel bought in an auction, which once hung in an iconic San Diego dive bar named Albie’s Beef Inn. (As a San Diego native who drank one too many martinis that tasted like jet fuel at Albie’s, I gasped, then nearly cried when I saw them.)

Still, Jacumba owes its draw as a wellness outpost to its mineral-rich hot springs. The hotel’s Ritual pool, around which there are thatched cabanas, lounge seating, and firepits for guests and day-pass holders, is pumped with a flow from a natural aquifer mineral hot springs that’s kept between 93 to 101 degrees. The Solstice pool, tucked behind the hotel near changing rooms stocked with toiletries from Grown Alchemist, is quieter. The smaller indoor soaking pool in the Echo Room is for hotel guests only. It’s kept at 102 degrees and sits below a circular skylight that reminds of a James Turrell work.

After Osborne, Winters, and Strukel finished overhauling the hotel, the lake, which had been neglected, drained, and filled with rubbish, seemed like an obvious next focus for the town whose major draw is its waters. "It’s where all the families would visit," says Osborne. They worked alongside Kumeyaay members from the ecological restoration nonprofit Indigenous Regeneration and locals for about a year to clean up the lake and get the swimming spot back in shape. "The moment that lake was full again we realized there were about fifty kids living in town," Osborne says. Now, they had a place to hang out, ride their bikes, and cool off. "When we look into the future, we’d like to bring in more community elements like [the lake] to strengthen and benefit the community," he adds.

A short walk away from the hotel grounds, the team repurposed the Old Bathhouse, a ruin left over from a fire that gutted the original hotel, as an open-air venue where they host donation-based, candlelit concerts. The trio use the town’s old gas station as an office. They also renovated a handful of off-site accommodations within walking distance from the hotel and main drag—Spanish bungalow-style Casitas with private hot spring soaking tubs, a 780-square-foot house called La Ranchita, the three-bedroom Village House, and a 16-person cabin called The Lodge.

Osborne, Winters, and Strukel’s undertaking is part of a wider "reinvention" in the area. Around the same time that the group secured their package deal for about 80 percent of the town from Dave and Helen Landman, the longtime owners of most of Jacumba Hot Springs, the Landmans sold the former nudist resort, DeAnza Springs, north of town to a separate investor duo who turned the plot into Nomadic, described on its website as "the next Burning Man–like community" with glamping, a geodesic dome, RV hookups, and renovated motel rooms. 

The wellness craze is nothing new in California, nor is the phenomenon of luxe travel accommodations or expensive "revitalization" projects that have little to do with locals changing the face of small towns like nearby Joshua Tree or Marfa, Texas, further east. For the last decade or so, so-called "secondary cities" across the country have experienced surges in affluent newcomers and rising home costs. Jacumba Hot Springs—with less than 600 residents in 2020 (now around 930), with a median age of 62—has some of the lowest incomes and property values in San Diego County. Instead of outpricing established residents, the We Are Human Kind team say they took extra care to build a human-centered area that they themselves want to live in and see replicated elsewhere.

Winters volunteers at the Jacumba Community Center, and Osborne signed on as the center’s board president. They aim to renegotiate Section 8 entitlements (federal vouchers that provide rental housing assistance to low-income households) for the town’s elderly residents. The team also works with Border Kindness, a nonprofit organization operating along the nearby border wall that provides humanitarian aid to migrants and asylum seekers detained in the area. In 2023, as the group was preparing to open the renovated hotel, Jacumba Hot Springs became an unplanned staging ground for U.S. immigration enforcement as large groups of migrants, many of whom planned to request asylum, waited to be processed by Border Patrol at makeshift camps in the desert town.

Depending on which local you ask, whether it’s Ellen who owns mini ponies down the road and sells her tie-dye creations at the hotel’s monthly open market, or Coyote, the UFO enthusiast who I met at the community center breakfast, Jacumba is home to more than one "energy vortex," which adds to the mysticism emanating from—and drawing people to—the region.

But in Jacumba, building here means living here: The main drag is more or less one street with a smattering of old shopfronts. To rent one from the trio, they say there’s one condition: you must live in town to build up the local economy. It’s a refreshing departure from the usual gentrification narrative we see play out time and again when big city creatives set their sights on a small town and frame it as a novelty, and displace its residents amidst the transformation. "We make a serious effort to hire as many locals as possible to support small businesses to make sure they have a way to make a living," says Osborne, who adds that about 75 percent of the hotel staff live in the area. 

Admittedly, I was expecting to encounter a tension-filled scene of small town "Airbnbification" in Jacumba Hot Springs, but the hotel proprietors’ involvement with the existing community took me by surprise. That’s not to say the town’s reshaping doesn’t largely cater to a certain set: Strukel’s boyfriend, Lampley (the hotel’s "director of audio and visual experiences"), runs a vintage clothing shop called Impossible Railroad Trading Post where he also lathe cuts vinyl records. Oslo Sardine Bar, a pop-up from San Diego native and tinned fish enthusiast Max Daily, started building out a permanent space called the Jacumba Yacht Club in the town’s old library in 2024. And the group is hitting its stride with hotel programming, from monthly "bathhouse bazaars" to an annual Jacumbia Festival.

The revitalization is still ongoing—though for the friends, it isn’t just about business. They see the hotel as not just a destination, but a catalyst; a vision of small town revival rooted in care, creativity, and hot springs magic, and maybe even a vortex or two.

Top photo by Mikael Kennedy.

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