popular stop on the stagecoach lines from Salisbury to Asheville. Revolutionary War veteran and state legislator Captain John Reid was the first known proprietor of Catawba Springs. After his death in 1821, the spa passed through a series of owners: Charles Jugnot, William Simonton, and Joseph Hampton. In 1838, Hampton renovated and expanded Catawba Springs, including the construction of a two-story, 100-room hotel. After the renovation, during parties and on holidays, as many as 500 guests assembled on the porch of the hotel. Before that time, the spa could only accommodate sixty to seventy guests in its cabins. Most guests were members of the southern planter class from North and South Carolina. Among the names of prominent North Carolina families listed in the hotel records are the Grahams, Brevards, Alexanders, Caldwells, Davidsons, and Polks. Some guests made their way to the spa from Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana. Students from nearby Davidson College could also be found enjoying themselves there on the weekends. During the early 1840s, Peter S. Ney ran a school for boys at the resort known as Stewart's Seminary. American Civil War During the Civil War, the local area raised two units for the Confederacy. In March 1862, a group of local men, most of whom were related, formed a company known as the "Dry Pond Dixies" (Company G, 52nd regiment of North Carolina Troops) and joined the Confederacy. Added to their number were a number of Quakers from Randolph County, who did not fight but tended the wounded. The second group was known as the Beatty's Ford Rifles (Company K 23rd Regiment). The Civil War put an end to the southern planter aristocracy, and with its patron base depleted, Catawba Springs closed in the mid-1860s. As North Carolina recovered from the devastation of the war, railways and eventually good highways, led to the opening of mountain resorts. (A similar, but unrelated, resort operated under the name Sparkling Catawba Springs in Catawba County during the latter part of the nineteenth and early twentieth century.) The buildings were demolished in 1930, and the springs now bubble invisibly into a farm pond. A faint, lingering scent of sulfur is all that remains. Town incorporation In October 1874, Denver's first postmaster, John A. Kids, was appointed. Mail to the Catawba Springs post office was transferred to the Denver post office the next year. Two years later, the community was incorporated as