Before summer turns to autumn and the reporting here turns to other topics, may we take one more stroll among the countless springs of the area.
Marshall W. Fishwick, whose 1978 “Springlore in Virginia” is a delightfully definitive dissertation on the the subject, noted an interesting connection to an era mentioned here previously.
As Fishwick pointed out, the last stage of the era of the development of the springs as leisure destinations (in most cases a vain hope as it turned out) overlapped another period of investment overreach. Fishwick called the latter a time of “get rich fever” that bedazzled the Old Dominion’s businessmen of the 1890s.
“Somebody should write a book on Virginia’s Boom Hotels,” the late scholar opined.
The era so-described typically began with discovery of fields of iron ore, coal or other minerals. Add a railroad connection, men with bulky wallets and dreams of more to be had for the asking, and just like that a boomtown was born. As the centerpiece of the supposedly magnificent city to come, a grand hotel was often envisioned.
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Such was the case in Glasgow over in Rockbridge County as detailed here not long ago. Investors were rallied, streets and sidewalks laid out, and a magnificent hotel overlooking the town was built that was intended to compete with the best of U.S. cities and abroad.
Just as swiftly, the financial Panic of 1893 intervened to bring the whole project to ruin. Despite a gala opening night decorated with rich and well-dressed ladies and gentlemen from all over, the hotel never left the launching pad.
Fishwick noted a similar story in Buena Vista, where a lavish Stanford White-designed hotel eventually became the former Southern Seminary women’s college. Other such melancholy projects at Goshen (burned); Irish Creek (constructed and dismantled); and Waynesboro (converted to a finishing school for young ladies) were also described.
New Castle was supposed to have been one of these boom towns seeing as how it sat astride the great Oriskany iron ore field. It would be “the Pittsburgh of the South,” one wag dubbed it.
Such an economic powerhouse would need not one grand hotel but two, developers insisted. The Bel Air dressed up a hill with an expansive view of the town and mountains and the Craig City Inn went up to the east.
Mines were dug, railroads connected, and the population of the then tiny county exploded. Alas, bountiful though it was, the ore was eventually found to be too difficult to extract profitably. Pittsburgh New Castle was never to be.
Enter in 1912 an outfit called Graham-Reynolds-Lee Co. Enterprises with the novel idea of converting the Craig City Inn to a centerpiece for a resort to be built around Ripley Springs elsewhere in the county. Problem was the newly christened Virginia Mineral Springs was 4 miles distant from the Craig City Inn.
So they moved the hotel, all four stories, to the new location.
That hotel burned to the ground less than 20 years later. Many of these old healing springs resorts suffered similarly fiery fates as they failed one by one. Insurance fraud was a likely common denominator.
As for the Virginia Mineral Springs Hotel, Fishwick cited the testimony of locals who insisted the hotel was torched intentionally, not once but twice. Supposedly the perp was observed pouring gasoline on the veranda before dropping the match after the first attempted arson failed.
Even as ashes, the former Craig County palace of hospitality differed from its counterparts in Glasgow, Goshen, Irish Creek, and Waynesboro.
“Only in New Castle was the hotel moved to a new site,” Fishwick wrote.
One more nugget the Roanoke-born Fishwick dug up in his research was the identity of an investor in a couple of lots for the metropolis that never was at Glasgow. The man was identified as the Duke of Marlborough, otherwise known as George Charles Spencer Churchill, a British peer.
Another colorful sort from the long era of the healing springs resorts was Col. John Crow, military credentials vague but stature as a host vast. Crow was the first coroner appointed when Alleghany County was incorporated in 1822 “but it was for his service to the living, not the dead, that he is still remembered,” Fishwick wrote.
The restaurateur and barkeep operated Crow’s Tavern, located at a choice spot on the road between Old Sweet Spring and White Sulphur Springs in present-day West Virginia. Crow’s visitors included Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, Martin Van Buren, John C. Calhoun, Thomas Hart Benton and James Buchanan.
One of the many attractions of Crow’s hospitality for politicians, the gentry, and regular folks was a refreshing beverage said to be invented in house by the tavern-keeper himself: the mint julep.
To be sure, the claim is controversial, bitter reaction sure to come from Kentucky, Alabama, and other julep-sipping locales. The rage of the bluegrassers is obvious given that Crow’s recipe called for cognac, port and rum instead of the traditional bourbon splashed over the ice and mint.
It is unclear whether juleps of any description are served before breakfast in either Kentucky or Alabama as they were at Crow’s. The practice was so well-known that out-of-town sportsmen stopped by the tavern early on the way to the hunt.
It was said that one such visitor arrived alone. The caller was a thirsty Millard Fillmore. Crow was later asked if he had been surprised to open his door before dawn to find the president of the United States on a solo mission (there was no Secret Service in those days) to buy a julep.
“Certainly not,” came the reply. “Who would want to ride that far with Millard Fillmore?”
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