Spring House
The Chautauqua Spring House located in the hollow due west of here off of the Tree Top Trail, was constructed to shelter the clear spring that supplied drinking water to the Chautauqua Hotel and campground in the early twentieth century. While this spring and most others are no longer considered safe sources of drinking water, the Spring House is a nice place to visit and enjoy the quiet solitude of its surroundings.
This natural spring is typical of many found in the area and the reason for the town being named Crystal Springs. First settled by a Methodist preacher, Elisha Lott in 1823 after the state legislature established Copiah County as the eighteenth county in Mississippi, the original town was located approximately three miles west of its current location.
Copiah derived from the Choctaw words "calling panther" was carved from Hinds County three years after the land was ceded by the Choctaw Nation in the Treaty of Doak's Stand in 1820 and admittance of Mississippi as the twentieth state in the Union six years earlier in 1817. Crystal Springs relocated to its present location in 1858 when the railroad was built through this area on the main ridge separating the Pearl River and Mississippi River watersheds.