St. Joseph's Health Resort

Our "Al Capone Overnight" was held on the grounds of this former resort and among the ruins of the past!

The St. Joseph's Health Resort opened in 1927 but it was not the first structure to take advantage of the medicinal qualities of Sulphur Springs, which was located on the property. The spring's medicinal properties were well known to the Native Americans and the early French explorers to the region. In 1898, the Sulphur Lick Springs Hotel opened nearby and it expanded in 1920.

The Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart, an order based in Pennsylvania, purchased the hotel in 1927 and converted it into a European-style health resort. It was opened to guests who suffered from infectious diseases, as well as to those simply looking for a place of rest or retreat. The nuns experienced many difficulties in the early years, including a lack of funds and opposition from the Ku Klux Klan in the area, who hated Catholics and had considerable influence at the time.

However, a visit from Chicago Mayor William "Bill Bill" Thompson (who Al Capone described as "the best mayor money can buy) in 1929 changed the fortunes of the resort almost overnight. Thompson had come to the resort to recover from surgery and later held many political conferences and parties here.

News coverage of the gatherings made St. Joseph's known throughout the Midwest. One of the Sisters reported in 1956 that more than 1,000 guests came to the resort for those meetings, including many organized crime figures. One of which was Al Capone, who found the resort to be a very peaceful and private place and  he visited here many times before his later imprisonment.

A new chapel was added to the facility in 1941 and six years later, it was elevated to parish status to serve Catholics who lived in the surrounding area. In 1955, the Sisters had the original Sulphur Lick Hotel demolished and they replaced it with a new addition that included a men's bath and therapy room, a recreation room, a kitchen and dining room, lobby, gift shop, lounge and beauty parlor.

The nuns continued to operate the resort until 1978, when they sold it to a Wisconsin company, who closed it down several years later. It has remained mostly vacant since that time. In 1994, a fire damaged most of the building but it was purchased again the next year with plans to turn it into a retreat or conference center. Unfortunately, a lack of funds prevented this and the buildings were abandoned.

The resort was finally sold at auction in 2004 and divided into parcels, which included the former resort building, woods acreage and the DeBolt House, where the Fox River Bed and Breakfast is located.

In recent years, the resort has gained a reputation for being haunted and many have reported unexplained sights and sounds, including apparitions of guests from years long past, roaming the abandoned buildings, the wooded paths once maintained by the nuns, the grotto once visited by Al Capone and more.