Now, about that cemetery in the hamlet of Sanitaria Springs

Sussex County has its share of unusually named crossroads communities. Shaft Ox Corner, southeast of Millsboro, drew its name from the way a team of working oxen negotiated that particular turn in the road.

Three converging roads that formed a tilted triangle on the map north of Bridgeville became known as Cocked Hat. And southwest of Georgetown, Hardscrabble denoted a crossroads intersection in an area where poor soil conditions made a tough go for farmers.

But Sussex isn’t the only place with unusual names.

On our way back from a month on the Hudson River and Lake Champlain, towing the vessel we call Nellie Peach, I pulled off alongside a country road leading through a collection of old frame houses. Some would call it a hamlet.

On the side of the road opposite the houses, a cemetery crept up a hillside. Crooked and mossy tombstones studded the burial ground in no particular pattern. Billowy, century-old shrubs broke the solemnity of the setting with their loud, late-August display of white blossoms.

A wrought-iron archway invited visitors into the cemetery thick with green grass, certainly not lacking for rain.The name of the cemetery, its capital letters cut from metal and bolted in the arch, made me stare for a moment: SANITARIA SPRINGS CEMETERY. I found it ironic that the most notable feature in a village named Sanitaria Springs was its cemetery.

At the time of our discovery, I was following a backroads, cross-country connection that Google maps assured us would lead us from one interstate in New York to another over the Pennsylvania line. It was part of our quest to bypass the tangled traffic of New York City as we trailered our way from Burlington, Vermont, to Lewes.

Stories everywhere. In Pennsylvania coal country, Mauch Chunk – in an effort to improve its economic fortunes way back – changed its name to Jim Thorpe after successfully lobbying to become the final resting place for the famous Native American athlete.

Sanitaria Springs started out as Osborne Hollow and held that name until two brothers – one a doctor, the other a marketing-savvy businessman – convinced people of the area to change its name.

According to articles gleaned from the internet, Dr. Sylvester Kilmer, schooled in traditional and homeopathic, natural medicine, made good money through his medical practices and the sale of his bottled concoctions designed to treat all kinds of maladies. Most popular was Dr. Kilmer’s Swamp Root Kidney, Liver and Bladder Cure. It was still available for purchase into the 1980s, more than 100 years after it was first marketed.

After discovering special mineral springs in the area of New York state called Osborne Hollow, Dr. Kilmer decided to use the springs as the basis for many advertised cures including cancer treatments. This was all in a time long before government oversight through what would eventually become the Food and Drug Administration.

Dr. Kilmer built a late-1800s health spa in a complex of buildings surrounding the springs, convinced locals to change the name of their community to Sanitaria Springs, and worked with several members of his family to expand the enterprise into a successful business that lasted decades. Traditional practitioners reportedly scorned the remedies and treatments as so much quackery. But that didn’t stop an enterprise that was bringing in millions before its luster, under greater scrutiny, faded – along with Sanitaria Springs – in the first few decades of the 20th century.

Get off the beaten path, and you never know what interesting historical chapters those backroads cemeteries may reveal.