Stafford Mineral Springs Water Pamphlets

In the latter half of the nineteenth century, Confederate veteran Edward W. Stafford settled near the town of Vossburg, Mississippi, and discovered that a group of Choctaw, who had evaded deportation to the reservations in Oklahoma, often took their sick or wounded to a mineral springs in his pasture. The Choctaw called the springs “Bogohama” (“Water of Life”), and after word spread of the water’s curative powers, a group of capitalists formed the Stafford Mineral Springs and Hotel Company in New Orleans, Louisiana, on May 19, 1892. The bottling works began to produce two railcars of bottled water per day in 1893, and the hotel opened in 1899. Travelers from across the country came to Vossburg to visit the springs, and Stafford Mineral Springs Water was sold throughout the nation.

In 1918, the company’s original shareholders sold the company, and during the Great Depression, visitors stopped coming to the springs. In the 1950s, the site of the springs was converted into a motel and then a dude ranch in the 1960s. Commercial investments in the Stafford Springs ceased during the 1980s, and the area is now residential.