The new owners of a historic retreat in Jacumba Hot Springs want to show how transformation in small towns can actually serve the community.

The sun is setting in San Diego's Sonoran Desert. A dusty fuchsia hue, the color of bougainvilleas, stretches across the sky. The air smells of spices and sulfur. Less than half a mile to the south, the U.S.-Mexico border wall looms with its tall, rusted slats. A couple emerges from a vintage Argosy trailer -- its shell painted "Hotel Check-in" -- with sand-colored ceramic mugs in hand. Nearby, the freshly renovated Jacumba Hot Springs Hotel blends in with the desert landscape, its adobe-inspired walls and other hallmarks of Pueblo Revival-and Southwestern-style architecture, like exposed vigas, flanked by palms and a xeriscaped courtyard.

The unincorporated community of Jacumba Hot Springs, situated in the mountains of southeastern San Diego County along old Highway 80, has lived many lives, but this hotel has long been its center. Many millennials born and raised in the region (myself included), know Jacumba as a bit of a ghost town in recent decades. The land was originally inhabited by the Kumeyaay people, who organized their way of life around the area's geothermal hot springs and their therapeutic properties. It became a popular resort destination when the namesake hotel opened in 1925, drawing wellness tourists and Hollywood stars to the area's healing hot springs and mineral-rich reservoir. (The proximity to Tijuana, famous during the Prohibition era for its jazz clubs with cheap alcohol, didn't hurt.) At its peak in the 1930s and '40s, Jacumba was a thriving community with shops, a dance hall, and a railroad stop. But the opening of Interstate 8 in the '60s diverted traffic, impacting local businesses, and by 1983, a fire destroyed much of the hotel, marking the beginning of a long chapter of decline for the area.