Lithia Spring Park, Temple, New Hampshire

Caption on the front of this real photo postcard: "Lithia Spring Park, Temple, [New Hampshire]."

Sign on larger, nearer building: "Pack Monadnock, Lithia Spring, Bottling House."

Sign on far building: "Pack Monadnock, Lithia Spring, Temple, N.H."

Two men and two women pose for a photo in front of the bottling house at Lithia Spring Park, which was located on Pack Monadnock Mountain near the town of Temple, New Hampshire. During the last decade of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth century, visitors to the park could partake of the lithia water that was available from the spring. The lithium salts in the water were thought to have medicinal benefits.

A book by authors Michael G. Dell'Orto, Priscilla A. Weston, and Jessie Salisbury about the New Hampshire towns of Wilton, Temple, and Lyndeborough (Charleston, S.C.: Arcadia, 2003) explains what eventually happened to the park:

"People flocked to Pack Monadnock Lithia Springs, which operated from 1891 until 1911, to enjoy picnics and slides and teeters free of charge and to take the therapeutic waters. 'Contains more Lithium than any other Lithia Spring known,' claimed proprietor Sydney Scammon. 'Best Remedy for Kidney Trouble and Indigestion.' The popular (and profitable) enterprise went out of business abruptly when Scammon was observed adding bottled lithium to the 'natural' spring water."