DENHAM SPRINGS - Denham Springs officials are working to restore historic sites around the city. One of them is Spring Park; it holds the spring that gave the city its name.

The park as a whole is being renovated, but the spring itself is a project that Mayor Gerard Landry says is something special. 

"It is still active. If you go over, look at it right now, there's still water bubbling out of it. It's hard to believe,” Landry said. “The stories that I've heard are that they brought a police officer back here with us, and shot a hole in the middle of the spring, and the water starts flowing again."

The spring has a history dating back to around the Civil War. Landry says people used to come from all over the country to bathe in the springs.

"People would travel here from far and wide to stay in these hotels and come down here and bathe in the spring water. It was a mineral spring that had healing properties that people believed would, I guess, make them live forever. I'm not sure, but it was a thriving business back then."

The site has faced two main issues affecting restoration: funding and geography. It's located close to the Amite River, as it was once called Amite Springs. Therefore, rising water sometimes floods the area.

"There's a challenge with when the water rises, it kind of floods this particular site. So we have to figure out a way to make it easier to clean up after an event like that," he said. 

Landry hopes whoever takes over after him works to get the spring "springing" once again.

"We hope to have the springs behind me rehabbed so that they're actually producing larger volumes of water. LSU architecture student, landscape architecture students have been out here two years in a row, and they have looked at the site, and they have so many great ideas that we hope that we can implement them at some point in the future," he added.