On June 5, 1998, sixteen rooms in a two-story log building at Soap Lake’s Notaras Lodge are gutted by fire. The massive, desiccated, old-growth logs used to build the lodge fuel the fire. As a city landmark, the Notaras is almost as famous as the lake. Thanks to firefighters who race 25 miles from Moses Lake, parts of the lodge will be salvaged.
Romary’s Baby
The original Inn at Soap Lake was built of rounded river rock in 1911 by gambler and real-estate investor E. Paul Janes, who disappeared mysteriously in New York City two years later. Its stone construction spared the lodge from the fires that have ravaged the town. Known today as Soap Lake Resort, the lodge came to life under Marina Romary (1938-2021), a Soap Lake native who served as mayor from 1981-1986. Her passion was collecting artifacts of the American West. She gathered drawings, primitive figurines, antiques, and sculptures to use for the resort’s décor. Each room became a sort of museum.
The 16 rooms that burned included the John Wayne Room, which had arrows on the walls; the Outlaw Room, with its wanted posters and prison bars; the Charlie Russell Room, which sported agates and petrified wood; the Chief Joseph Room, and others. Each room held a counter box swathed in epoxy that Romary designed to display her figurines and knick-knacks.
Many of the artifacts from the 1998 fire were recovered and are still being used in 2023 in cabins that carry on the Western themes. Salvaged artifacts decorate the Mrs. No Cabin, featuring Tennessee Cedar woodwork and a jetted tub that fills with Soap Lake water. The Honeymoon Suite has a fireplace, a direct view to Soap Lake, and a private balcony. The Bunkhouse, decorated in an Old West motif, boasts an 1870 jam kettle, a wooden packhorse saddle, gold bags, a 1900 cistern pump, and bunkbeds upstairs for the kids. The Old Mexico room glistens with sombreros, faux parrots, seashells from Mexico, and a log carving that depicts siesta time.
Frequent Fires
Fiery devastation in the city of Soap Lake has been frequent. First the three-story Siloam Hotel burned to the ground in 1921. The Thomas Hotel and the Lakeview Sanitarium were toppled soon thereafter. Nor is the Notaras apt to be the last casualty. The shrub-steppe environment gets only 7-9 inches of rain per year. A wildfire of 1,000 acres sprang up in June 2023 and put the city on Level 1 evacuation status, which signifies “get ready to leave.” Agencies from Grant County, Soap Lake, Ephrata, and the Department of Natural Resources all rallied to put out the blaze.
In the early decades of the twentieth century, Soap Lake, which promised good health and good times, was one of the most popular resort destinations north of Palm Springs. The magic lay in the water, whose complex of minerals soothed skin conditions. But promoters of its health benefits made much greater claims that matched the gamut of illnesses then plaguing humankind. In the arid climate of the Columbia Basin, the city offered luxury hotels alongside sanitariums that treated invalids. The lakeside Notaras Lodge combined these attractions. It piped lake water directly to the rooms.
Recovery From War
World War I veterans returning with a gamut of illnesses tried the waters of Soap Lake to treat them. Before that, sheep herders and cattle ranchers had bathed their stock in the lake to rid them of blackflies, ticks, and other insects. And long before non-Native settlers arrived, Indigenous people had bathed their battle-weary horses in the sudsy waters.
In the early part of the twentieth century, some former soldiers, their limbs amputated, arrived in horse-drawn carriages and jitneys. Some suffered what was then known as shell shock, a disorder known today as PTSD. Other soldiers arrived suffering open sores from trench warfare or heavy use of cigarettes they smoked in futile attempts to soothe their jangled nerves. All those soldiers found relief in Soap Lake.
Andrew Earl McKay (1894-1938) was a World War I soldier afflicted by skin disease. Born in Ballard, he came to know Eastern Washington by working as a farmhand for an uncle in Wilbur near Soap Lake. Drafted in the Army, he contracted thromboangitis, commonly known as Buerger’s Disease, which results in vascular obstruction, ulcers, gangrene, and in the worst cases, skin necrosis. There was no known cure. It often resulted in amputation.
McKay returned in 1919 to Eastern Washington with both legs useless, their flesh black. His case was pronounced terminal, and he was given three months to live, but he kept hope. He turned to the legends he had heard, about the therapeutic properties of the lake. Natives had called it Smokiam, which roughly translated means "healing waters." He tried ingesting the water and soaking himself in it. The black flesh began to recede. His only loss was one big toe.
Founding the Hospital
McKay became a vocal advocate for the ways the lake could suspend the progress of the disease. With fellow survivor Bill Williamson, McKay lobbied the Veterans Administration (VA) to send other veterans to Soap Lake. The two men traveled selflessly to Washington, D.C., amid challenges and pains, to help fellow veterans. Their lobbying efforts succeeded. The VA sent a delegation to investigate their claims and the progress they had made. The investigation convinced the VA that the lake indeed held medical promise.
In 1938, "the federal government authorized the construction of a Veteran’s Hospital in Soap Lake, Washington, specifically for the research and treatment of Buerger’s Disease" (McKay). McKay lived only until the age of 44, however. He died three months before the hospital opened. His ashes were scattered over the lake that had extended his life, and the hospital was dedicated to him as the McKay Memorial Hospital. In later years the hospital helped many other veterans. After it had outlived the veterans whom it assisted with emergency room services, x-rays, and physical and occupational therapy, it was remodeled and converted to a nursing home. It was renamed the McKay Healthcare and Rehabilitation Center in the 1980s.
Diminishing Returns
Two developments after World War II reduced the allure of the town and lake. The first was the discovery of sulfa drugs and penicillin. Sufferers of illnesses ranging from eczema to STDs could find relief without resorting to travel to the hinterlands or mud packs from the bottom of Soap Lake. At about the same time, the advent of Grand Coulee Dam and large-scale agriculture altered the water table in the coulee (or canyon) and diluted the concentration of chemicals in the high-alkali lake. Engineers tried to divert the leakage of water diluting Soap Lake, but it now rarely generates the great pillows of suds that result when stiff winds blow up and down the coulee. Patronage of lake resorts today has fallen by 75 percent from the peak of its success from 1905 to 1940.
Despite lamentations about the town’s demise, however, families still travel from the I-5 corridor to take vacations in the several resorts and RV parks at Soap Lake. Live jazz can still be heard on summer weekends. A superb Italian-Brazilian restaurant, La Cucina Di Sofia, operates next door to the superbly remodeled Soap Lake Resort. And for true believers in the medical wonders of the sodium-rich lake, the waters still provide a balm to the body and the soul.
