Lithia Springs

I used to live in a town in GA called Lithia Springs. Back then I never bothered to figure out how the town got it's name although I did ask some locals. Nobody knew. Lithia sounded vaguely Greek to me so I figured the founders named it after some ancient city.

Years later I discovered that there are several towns in the US named Lithia Springs; one is in Florida. There's a place in the Holyoke Mountain range in West-Central MA named Lithia Springs but it's not a town. It may actually be a spring. You can see it on google maps.

After some digging I found a web page regarding some religious sect that held retreats at a site somewhere in the Midwest which had a "lithia spring." Years ago "lithia" is how people referred to the element lithium, and somehow folks knew this metal was in the water issuing from the spring. Lithium was used to treat gout in the nineteenth century, at least according to wikipedia. Good to know.