Editing Red Boiling Springs, Tennessee (section)

===Founding===

The area was originally known as Salt Lick Creek due to a [[salt lick]] that was located approximately four miles northwest of current day Red Boiling Springs. The salt lick attracted animals, [[Indigenous peoples of the Americas|American Indians]], and other people. Among the people who came to hunt the animal trails was [[Daniel Boone]], who reportedly carved his name and the year 1775 into a [[beech tree]] in a nearby community.<ref name= Pryor>[http://www.redboilingspringstn.com/history.htm History<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref>

The area was first surveyed, and [[land grant]]s were first awarded in the mid-1780s. The first post office was established in 1829 and named the Salt Lick Creek post office. In 1847, the post office was renamed "Red Boiling Springs."<ref name= Pryor/>  Sometime in the 1830s, a farmer named Jesse Jones noticed red-colored sulphur water bubbling up from springs on his farm. In 1844, a businessman named Samuel Hare, realizing the springs' commercial potential, purchased a {{convert|20|acre|ha|adj=on}} plot of the Jones farm surrounding the springs, and constructed an inn. The inn's remote location and the region's poor roads likely doomed the venture, and the inn was gone by the 1870s.<ref>Jeanette Keith Denning, ''A History of the Resort at Red Boiling Springs, Tennessee: A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School, Tennessee Technological University'' (Cookeville, Tenn.: 1982), pp. 6-7.</ref>

''Aunt Sooky's Salve'' was a widely distributed product that was manufactured in Red Boiling Springs under the supervision of 'Aunt' Sooky Goad, who also claimed to be the original discoverer of the benefits of the Red Boiling Springs water. Early in life, she had [[dropsy]] and claimed to be cured by drinking the sulphur water. In 1914, a Nashville man wrote an article stating that Shepherd Kiby (Kirby), the brother of Goad, discovered that washing his eyes with the spring water reduced eye irritation, but Goad's use of the water seems to have preceded that of Kirby.<ref>HISTORY OF MACON CO TN (Harold Blankenship, 1986) pg 60-61.</ref>