John Lindblom – Record-Bee staff
LAKEPORT Eighteen-year-old Michelle Wells has proven beyond all doubt that there”s a lot more cooking in the Girl Scouts of America than Girl Scout cookies.
In a manner of speaking, Wells was a legend before her time. She was a 3.86 GPA student when she graduated from Upper Lake High School in 2005, she is quite possibly the youngest person in California to earn a real estate sales license, and was a Congressman Mike Thompson nominee for the West Point Military Academy, where she has been selected but has opted not to attend. She has also been recognized by organizations ranging from the Girl Scouts of America, she”s been a member for 12 years, to the U.S. Department of Defense.
That”ll do for starters.
For one of her most recent undertakings, she noted there was no definitive written works on the famed Bartlett Springs mineral baths era in Lake County. But there is now.
As a project to earn her Girl Scout Gold Award, the equivalent of the Boy Scout Eagle Scout award, Wells researched and wrote a book on Bartlett Springs. The award is the highest Girl Scout honor possible and has been added to her collection of achievements.
Wells, whose family owns and operates H.C. Wells Land and Development in Lakeport, says she was looking for a project that would have shelf life long after she finished it when she came upon the Bartlett Springs idea.
“My family owns property up at Bartlett Springs, but when I went to read about it there wasn”t a whole lot of information available. Just scattered information,” says Michelle. “I thought it being such an important area I would go ahead and research and write a book on it.”
One of the eight copies of the book she paid $9 a copy to produce, “The Bartlett Springs Area Past and Present” is already in the Lake County Historical Museum archives.
Her research included using the phone and letters to track down descendants of people who utilized the healing waters of Bartlett Springs and one man, Zane Grey (not the Wild West novel writer) who had actually been there generations ago when the springs was operating.
But there was, Michelle notes, a Wild West environment among the mineral water pools of Bartlett Springs and seven other copycat springs that opened there. “Dance halls,” she said. “Even a bowling alley.”
“It was incredible in its heyday,” Wells enthused. “The thing that impressed me most, in fact, was just how busy it was. I read diaries of people who had stomach problems. They went up there and drank the water and said it cured them. A man who had blemishes on his face and people who had seizures, the water cured them.
“There were a lot of people, educated and not, who really believed in this mineral water,” she adds. “It went from one springs to springs all over the mountain. It just kind of kept growing. Some people came and stayed for months, because it was such a long trip on horseback. You wouldn”t go there for the weekend, because it took such a long time to get there.”
Michelle says the remnants of the Bartlett Springs lodge remain today, “and there”s still a faucet up there when you can still sample the water, but it”s awful-tasting.”
To earn the Gold award, the Girl Scouts required that Michelle spend a minimum of 50 hours on her book project.
“But I really like writing and it wasn”t hard for me at all,” she said.
She earned her real estate license at 18, the youngest age allowed, by boning up on a real estate sales course while she was still 17.
“I just started doing it because I thought it would be a good way to put myself through college,” says Wells, who left her parents, Henry and Sherry Wells, behind five months ago to foist for herself as a sales agent, Girl Scout leader and student at Mendocino College. Next, she will attend U.C. Davis followed by law school.
She has already remained with the Scouts well beyond the time the majority of young women spend and has been a role model to a younger sister who is presently in the organization.
“When I got into high school, I realized being a Girl Scout is very important,” Michelle says. “I kind of think it helped me because I was so busy with scouting cancer drives, beach clean-ups, gathering presents for needy children that I never did anything wrong. I stayed out of trouble big-time.”
Her scouting has been a talking point for college entrance administrators and the like.
“Most kids come in and they played soccer, but I”d come in and they”d say, You”ve been a girl scout for 12 years? Tell us about that.””
Will she be a Girl Scout all her life?
“Yeah,” says Michelle.
Contact John Lindblom at jlwordsmith@mchsi.com.
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