Jacumba Hot Springs has been down on its luck for decades.
The town 110km (68 miles) southeast of downtown San Diego, in the US state of California, is situated on the Mexican border, where, despite its fence, undocumented migrants pass regularly and a crisis flared in 2023.
Just 640 metres (2,100 feet) north of the border lies the Jacumba Hot Springs Hotel. The hotel’s owners are new to town and the business.
“Everything is the first time,” says Melissa Strukel, co-owner of the hotel.
It was four years ago, early in the Covid-19 shutdown, that Strukel, a veteran San Diego designer and special-event rental entrepreneur, decided to take a drive. She wound up in a town she had never noticed before, standing outside a bedraggled old motel, smitten.
So smitten, in fact, that she climbed over a wall to get a better look. “I just knew right away that I belonged here,” she says.