Appalachian Community Histories – Hubbard Springs, Lee County: Mineral Waters, Snodgrass Hotel, and a Community Built Around Springs
Hubbard Springs sits in the part of Lee County where place names often grew from a road, a creek, a family, a post office, or a useful stop along the railroad. In 1904, Henry Gannett’s federal Gazetteer of Virginia listed Hubbard Springs as a post village in Lee County on a railway line, which shows that the name had already become more than a neighborhood memory by the early twentieth century. It was a recognized postal and geographic place in the far southwestern corner of Virginia.
The story preserved locally gives the place a deeper beginning. A 1983 Bristol Herald Courier article by George Dalton described Hubbard Springs as a village “nestled at the foot of Cumberland Mountain” and tied its name to Eli Hubbard, who was said by local residents Howard and Mrs. Ledford to have acquired the spring property about 1860. That tradition needs to be checked against older land records, but it is the strongest narrative explanation for why the springs carried the Hubbard name.
Eli Hubbard, John Snodgrass, and the Spring Property
The history of Hubbard Springs becomes clearer in the early 1900s, when John Snodgrass took the spring property and tried to turn it into something larger. Dalton’s article says Snodgrass acquired the Hubbard Springs property and began developing it in 1903 as a health center for people suffering from stomach trouble. According to the account, he sold property in Nebraska, bought a two room log house and a tract with twenty two springs, then built the site into a small resort centered on the water.
The same article says seven springs near the house produced different kinds of water, including sulphur, mineral, iron, limestone, and freestone water as remembered by Mrs. Glessye Humphreys and Mrs. Roy Lucas. Snodgrass reportedly turned the two room log structure into a fourteen room hotel, built a boardwalk to the springs, enclosed them with a rock wall, and added sheds with benches along the walk. The image is not of a large outside resort town, but of a mountain spring place reshaped into a local health retreat.
A Town Laid Out on Paper
The county record abstracts make Hubbard Springs more than a spring, hotel, or neighborhood name. On October 1, 1904, Lee County Deed Book 42, page 105 recorded that a plat plan for John Snodgrass for lots in Hubbard Springs was presented and accepted. The online Snodgrass source book describes this as the laying out of a new town of Hubbard Springs after John Snodgrass built his hotel.
That detail matters because a platted town shows intention. Hubbard Springs was not merely a spring beside a road. It had lots, sections, and a recorded plan. Snodgrass seems to have imagined a place where the springs, the hotel, the railroad stop, and nearby homes or businesses could fit into a small planned community.
John Snodgrass’s own will also ties the property directly to the buildings and the family estate. His September 11, 1906 will was made at Hubbard Springs in Lee County and listed the “Hubbard Spring Property Land and Buildings” among the real estate to pass to his wife, Mary Jane Snodgrass, during her lifetime and then to their children.
After Snodgrass died, the lot structure continued to matter. A November 13, 1908 deed from Mary Snodgrass and other heirs to E. F. Hedrick conveyed lots 4, 5, and 6 in section 3 of Hubbard Springs according to the plat filed by John Snodgrass. That deed record is one of the strongest pieces of evidence that Hubbard Springs had become a real property landscape, not only a remembered spring resort.
The Post Office and the Public Life of Hubbard Springs
A post office often marks the difference between a local name and a community that appears in public records. Jim Forte Postal History lists Hubbard Springs in Lee County with postal dates from 1892 to 1955. That gives the community a sixty three year postal life, beginning before Snodgrass’s resort development and lasting well into the mid twentieth century.
The business directory record also places Hubbard Springs inside Lee County’s commercial network. The Virginia Business Directory and Gazetteer includes Hubbard Springs associated entries for J. U. Burgan, H. L. Grubb, C. A. Noe, W. M. Noe and Son, and J. M. Weston. These are small clues, but together they show that Hubbard Springs had residents and business names visible enough to appear beside Jonesville, Pennington Gap, Hagan, Ben Hur, Rose Hill, and other Lee County communities.
Railroad Water and Mountain Roads
The resort story depended on access. Dalton’s 1983 article says people came from “far and near” to drink the water, hauled water away by wagon, and shipped some of it by railroad. It also says travelers came to Hubbard by train, stayed at the Snodgrass Hotel, and drank the water for stomach trouble. In the days of the hotel, the article says Hubbard Springs was reached mainly by the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, with four passenger trains daily.
The later road descriptions show how the place remained connected after the railroad era faded. Dalton named Route 621 from 421 at Pennington Gap to Hubbard Springs, Route 659 down Sugar Run, and Route 656 branching toward Hubbard Springs. These road references help connect the older spring resort to the modern Lee County landscape.
The surrounding terrain also explains why springs mattered here. The U.S. Geological Survey’s 1954 study of the Jonesville district describes the Sugar Run lowland, Poor Valley Ridge, Powell Valley, and nearby water gaps. It specifically notes that Poor Valley Ridge is cut by four water gaps, including two near Hubbard Springs, and that such gaps were used by roads connecting Powell Valley and Poor Valley.
The map record preserves the place name as well. Virginia Energy lists the USGS 7.5 minute Hubbard Springs, VA-KY topographic map as an original 1946 map with a 1991 photo revision. USGS also explains that its Historical Topographic Map Collection preserves scanned topographic maps published between 1884 and 2006, making those maps valuable for tracing roads, ridges, hollows, cemeteries, churches, and older place names across time.
Families, Cemeteries, and Community Memory
The records after the resort years show Hubbard Springs as a lived community. New River Notes death record transcriptions include Hubbard Springs in informant and burial fields, including Bays family records. Sarah L. Bays, who died in 1926, had Matilda J. Yeary of Hubbard Springs listed as informant, while Leah Rebecca Bays, also in 1926, had Ally V. Noe of Hubbard Springs listed as informant and burial at Hubbard Springs Cemetery. These should be checked against original death certificates, but they are useful evidence that Hubbard Springs remained a family and cemetery place after the hotel era.
The community also reached into the national story through wartime service. The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency identified U.S. Army Air Forces Pvt. Donald E. Bays as a twenty one year old from Hubbard Springs, Virginia, killed during World War II and accounted for on December 20, 2024. DPAA reported that Bays was assigned to the Tow Target Detachment at Hickam Airfield on Oahu and was killed during the December 7, 1941 attack.
The Hotel’s End and the Springs That Remained
By 1983, the old Snodgrass Hotel was gone. Dalton’s article says the building deteriorated after John Snodgrass’s death and that someone apparently set fire to it in 1976. The article also reported that the lot had been cleared and that the springs were still flowing, though in rundown condition at that time.
That ending makes Hubbard Springs feel like many Appalachian places whose physical landmarks outlived their business purpose, then passed into memory. The hotel disappeared, but the name remained in deeds, wills, post office listings, business directories, death records, cemetery records, maps, and family stories.
Why Hubbard Springs Matters
Hubbard Springs was never one of Lee County’s largest towns, but its records show several layers of Appalachian history in one small place. It was a spring site named in local tradition for Eli Hubbard. It became a health retreat under John Snodgrass. It was platted into lots in the county deed books. It had a post office that lasted from the 1890s into the 1950s. It was tied to railroad travel, mountain roads, family cemeteries, and the larger story of Lee County’s people.
The history of Hubbard Springs is the history of a place built around water. The springs gave it a name, the railroad gave it visitors, Snodgrass gave it a hotel, and the people who lived there gave it memory. Even after the hotel burned and the resort story faded, Hubbard Springs remained what it had become in the records: a small Lee County community whose story still rises from the ground like the water that first made it known.
Sources & Further Reading
Lee County, Virginia Circuit Court Clerk. Deed Book 42, 105. Plat plan for John Snodgrass lots in Hubbard Springs, October 1, 1904. Lee County Circuit Court Clerk’s Office, Jonesville, Virginia. Abstracted in Virginia Source Book: Snodgrass Family. https://www.snodgrassclansociety.com/sourceBooks/Virginia_%28Panhandle%29_Source_Book-Snodgrass_Family-2024.pdf
Lee County, Virginia Circuit Court Clerk. Will Book 5, 136. Will of John Snodgrass, September 11, 1906. Lee County Circuit Court Clerk’s Office, Jonesville, Virginia. Abstracted in Virginia Source Book: Snodgrass Family. https://www.snodgrassclansociety.com/sourceBooks/Virginia_%28Panhandle%29_Source_Book-Snodgrass_Family-2024.pdf
Lee County, Virginia Circuit Court Clerk. Deed Book 48, 273. Mary Snodgrass and others to E. F. Hedrick, November 13, 1908. Lee County Circuit Court Clerk’s Office, Jonesville, Virginia. Abstracted in Virginia Source Book: Snodgrass Family. https://www.snodgrassclansociety.com/sourceBooks/Virginia_%28Panhandle%29_Source_Book-Snodgrass_Family-2024.pdf
Gannett, Henry. A Gazetteer of Virginia. U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 232. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1904. https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/b232
United States Geological Survey. Hubbard Springs, VA-KY Historical Topographic Map, 7.5 Minute Series, 1:24,000 Scale. 1946. https://store.usgs.gov/filter-products?country=US&keyword=Hubbard%20Springs®ion=VA
Virginia Department of Energy. “USGS 7.5′ Topographic Map for Hubbard Springs, VA-KY.” Virginia Energy Product Details. https://www.energy.virginia.gov/commerce/ProductDetails.aspx?productID=1317
United States Geological Survey. “Historical Topographic Maps: Preserving the Past.” National Geospatial Program. https://www.usgs.gov/programs/national-geospatial-program/historical-topographic-maps-preserving-past
Jim Forte Postal History. “Hubbard Springs, Lee County, Virginia.” Postal History. https://www.postalhistory.com/results.asp?cs=va&ct=Lee&group=20&sort=2
National Archives. “Post Office Reports of Site Locations, 1837–1950.” National Archives. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices/locations-1837-1950.html
Dalton, George. “Hubbard Springs May Have Been First Lee County Health Center.” Bristol Herald Courier, July 24, 1983. Transcribed in Virginia Source Book: Snodgrass Family. https://www.snodgrassclansociety.com/sourceBooks/Virginia_%28Panhandle%29_Source_Book-Snodgrass_Family-2024.pdf
Hunter, Thomas Lomax. “A Little Tour of Lee County.” Victoria Dispatch, March 13, 1931. Virginia Chronicle. https://virginiachronicle.com
Virginia Business Directory and Gazetteer. Richmond: Hill Directory Company, 1917. https://archive.org/stream/virginiabusiness02unse/virginiabusiness02unse_djvu.txt
Burns, Annie Walker. Southwest Virginia Historical Records: Lee County, Jonesville, Va., Edition. Washington, DC: Annie Walker Burns, 1930s. https://www.familysearch.org/search/catalog
Miller, Ralph L., and William P. Brosgé. Geology and Oil Resources of the Jonesville District, Lee County, Virginia. U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 990. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1954. https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/b990
Miller, Ralph L., and William P. Brosgé. Geology of the Jonesville District, Lee County, Virginia. U.S. Geological Survey Oil and Gas Investigation Map 104. Washington, DC: U.S. Geological Survey, 1950. https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/om104
VirginiaPlaces. “Natural Bridge.” VirginiaPlaces.org. https://www.virginiaplaces.org/geology/naturalbridge.html
New River Notes. “Lee County Death Records.” New River Notes. https://www.newrivernotes.com/lee-county-death-records/
Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency. “Airman Accounted for from World War II: Bays, D.” April 23, 2025. https://www.dpaa.mil/News-Stories/ID-Announcements/Article/4168741/airman-accounted-for-from-world-war-ii-bays-d/
Find a Grave. “Hubbard Springs Community Cemetery.” Find a Grave. https://www.findagrave.com
Day, Edward Warren. One Thousand Years of Hubbard History, 866 to 1895. New York: Harlan Page Hubbard, 1895. https://archive.org
Tennis, Joe. Southwest Virginia Crossroads: An Almanac of Place Names and Places to See. Johnson City, TN: Overmountain Press, 2004. https://books.google.com
Mize, Mary Grace. “History and Heritage Made Accessible: The Lee County, Virginia Story.” Honors Thesis, University of Mississippi, 2017. https://egrove.olemiss.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1641&context=hon_thesis
Author Note: Hubbard Springs is one of those Lee County places where a spring, a post office, a hotel, and a few deed-book entries open up a much larger story. I have not visited the old spring site personally, but the records show why the name stayed on maps and in local memory.