3 Friends Found a Crumbling Resort in California and Brought It (and an Entire Town) Back to Life

Occasionally, I have the fantasy of running my own inn. Somewhere in southern California, maybe in Ojai, I’ll find a rustic spot the owners are looking to sell, where I can spend my days greeting guests, pouring coffee, drawing maps of favorite hikes. Maybe it’s a common dream among travelers. For me, it’s certainly an unrealistic one—I couldn’t handle the headaches, the bills, or the laundry. I definitely don’t picture myself in this scenario, essentially becoming the town mayor.

Melissa Strukel, an interior designer from San Diego, didn’t see those things for herself, either. In 2020, she and her boyfriend were on a road trip along California’s Old Highway 80. Up in the mountains near the Mexican border, they passed a rundown motel. Something about it caught her eye: a pink façade that looked both antique and like something from the 1990s, plus the presence of natural hot springs. “I couldn’t stop thinking about it, I couldn’t stop talking about it,” she told me. “I knew there was something bigger happening, and that it was a part of my life in some way.”

A few months later, Strukel heard the property was for sale and made an offer. The purchase, though, came with an unexpected provision: she wouldn’t be buying just the motel but also a dilapidated gas station, several homes and storefronts, a funky bathhouse with no roof, and a dried-up lake. When she told me the backstory, it reminded me of the 2011 family movie “We Bought a Zoo.” Maybe Hollywood should make a sequel, I thought, and call it “We Bought a Town.”

Jacumba Hot Springs, population just shy of 900, lies about 70 miles east of San Diego. Strukel and her friends turned business partners—Corbin Winters, an interior designer, and Jeff Osborne, a real estate investor—invited me to visit last October to see what they had created. My drive from Los Angeles took me past the Pacific Ocean, before I headed east toward the rugged Imperial Valley, up into the high desert. Traffic fell away. There were pockets of trees, their autumn leaves turning golden. The mountains resembled heaps of reddish rock. 

When I drove into town, I almost passed right through and out the other side. There’s no stoplight, just a few shops and weathered ranch-style homes. It looked like a gold-mining village from the Old West. But a groovy sign that read restaurant. bar. mineral pools. enter the vortex—not to mention a pair of Land Rovers parked outside—suggested that I had arrived at the Jacumba Hot Springs Hotel. 

A nouveau-hippie mood pervades: reception is housed in a vintage Argosy trailer; thatched umbrellas line the swimming pools; wicker lampshades hover inside rustic pergolas. I met the three owners for a mezcal Old-Fashioned on the restaurant’s shady terrace. As they told it, the story of Jacumba is equal parts real estate saga and desert dream. 

The roadside resort was built in the 1920s, back when auto travel was trendy and drives were more leisurely, owing to the slower vehicles and rougher roads of the time. Families would drive for days on end, and finding a nice stopover was a big deal. Jacumba was advertised as a wellness outpost, designed to compete with places like Palm Springs.

Soon the hotel and its mineral waters became a popular getaway for Hollywood stars like Marlene Dietrich and Clark Gable. During Prohibition, its proximity to the Mexican border didn’t hurt, either. But that all changed in the 1960s, when Interstate 8 was constructed, bypassing the town. Tourism dried up, and by the turn of the 21st century, Jacumba had fallen on hard times. 

In 2020, shortly after the three friends acquired the property—and everything that came with it—they moved to Jacumba to become a part of the community. They may have started out as hoteliers, but they ended up becoming small-town planners. “We’re all sort of risk takers, fearless, and not out for capitalistic gain,” Strukel said. “We’re in this for the adventure and the process.”

The hotel’s adobe-style buildings are interconnected, with paths weaving between the rooms, a moody saloon, and the breezy restaurant. The main attractions are two large outdoor pools fed by mineral-rich springs. When I arrived that Saturday afternoon, the Ritual pool, which is kept between 98 and 101 degrees, was filled with day-trippers from San Diego who were drinking cocktails and hanging out in cabanas. The rectangular Solstice pool was slightly cooler and more subdued; it’s reserved for guests staying in one of the hotel’s 20 rooms or its five nearby guesthouses (which include a lodge that can sleep 16). Indoors, there’s a smaller pool named Echo, which is kept at 102 degrees.

I checked in to my suite, which, like the rest of the property, was decorated with handcrafted objects—African stools, Turkish pillows, antique Chinese doors—that felt very of-the-moment southern California. After I had settled in, the four of us took a walk through the village. The trio—Strukel, Winters, and Osborne—did not just redo a hotel; they revitalized a town. The lake is now full of water, landscaped, and open to the public. Across the street, Strukel’s boyfriend, David Lampley, runs a vintage-clothing store, called Impossible Railroad Trading Post, where he also cuts records for musicians on a 1938 machine. 

That night—after a terrific rib eye at Jacumba’s restaurant—I joined 30 other people at an old bathhouse, a short walk from the hotel, for a bluegrass concert. A fire in the 1970s had left the arched, pink-walled structure a roofless ruin. But the town’s patrons had festooned it with candles, rugs, heat lamps, and a bar. Free concerts are held there most weekends. The crowd was a mix of locals and visitors, including 30- and 40-somethings in wide-brimmed felt hats, enjoying live music under the stars.

The next morning, I took the owners’ suggestion and visited the Jacumba Community Center down the street, which has a small restaurant that caters mostly to locals. Winters, one of Jacumba’s co-owners, volunteers as a waitress. The center’s manager told me prices were kept low—two bucks for coffee, six for a plate of pancakes and eggs—to appeal to the whole community. 

Two dozen people­—young families, retirees, and veterans among them—were eating and chatting, and, whenever I asked, praising the hotel owners for their stewardship of the town. An older man told me he lived in one of the houses that were sold along with the hotel—and though the new owners refurbished it, they didn’t raise the rent. Another guy, very voluble, said he’d lived in town for 45 years, and that Strukel and her friends were “the best thing that’s ever happened here,” citing new visitors and job opportunities. “It’s amazing what they’ve done,” he added. (About 70 percent of the hotel employees live nearby, the owners said.)

The three friends from San Diego have plans for more: new restaurants, new stores, maybe a recording studio. “We love the people of this community,” Strukel told me. “They’re like family now. We want everybody to feel really good and welcomed.” 

A version of this story first appeared in the May 2025 issue of Travel + Leisure under the headline “Bubbling Over.”