Gilroy Yamato Hot Springs

Gilroy Yamato Hot Springs is a hillside resort of about eight acres above Coyote Creek, northeast of Gilroy. Its core holds sixteen contributing buildings and six contributing structures, mostly small one-story board-and-batten guest cabins named for U.S. states, along with a domed wooden kiosk over the spring source, a 1917 concrete mineral pool, a Buddhist shrine, a tea house and a Japanese garden bridge. Cabins were present by 1866, and the resort grew through the 1870s and 1920s, later suffering from the Great Depression. In 1938 Kyuzaburo Sakata, a Watsonville lettuce grower, bought the property, added Japanese-style baths and opened it for church conferences. Guests soon were almost entirely Japanese-American. The resort is recognized for its role as a gathering place for Japanese-Americans, especially older Issei seeking rest, and for its long recreational history. Fires in 1980 and 1992 destroyed several earlier buildings, but the remaining resources retain a strong sense of time and place.