"That" White Sulphur Springs (the one in WV) grew in the first half of the nineteenth century as the southern "Queen of the Watering Places". It first became the standard summer destination for wealthy Virginia residents seeking reprieve from heat, humidity, and disease of the "sickly season". As its popularity increased and it gained status as a socially exclusive site, the springs attracted elite guests from all over.
The resort, now known as The Greenbrier, remains one of the country's most luxurious and exclusive resorts. For many years, Sam Snead was the resort's golf pro and later golf pro emeritus. The resort has another significant place in golf history; in 1979, it hosted the first Ryder Cup to feature the current competitive setup of the US and European sides.
In 1992 The Washington Post reported that, during the Cold War, the resort had been the site of a "bunker", the Emergency Relocation Center known as Project Greek Island, which was intended to house and protect the U.S. Congress in the event of a nuclear attack. The Greenbrier also has served as the location of training camp for the Houston Texans and New Orleans Saints.
Wifey and I spent some time there many decades ago when first married, and had a great time!
But on our recent visit to North Carolina, we stumbled upon this place:
When Rufus Roberts built a hotel there in the late 1880s, he had four things going for him. First, located about four miles northwest of Mount Airy, at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains, it afforded guests a view that included the Ararat River flowing only a couple of hundred yards from the front porch. Second, the cooler temperatures made the hotel — which was primarily a summer resort — an ideal getaway spot for guests looking to escape North Carolina’s dog days before the time of air-conditioning. Third, by 1880 the railroad conveniently stretched from Wilmington to Mount Airy, providing fast, affordable transportation for easterners wanting to visit.
“Back in the day, if you lived on the coast or in the eastern part of the state and you wanted to come to the cooler weather, before the automobile you rode the train and the farthest west you could go was Mount Airy,” says Burke Robertson, a local businessman who is developing 150 acres of the old White Sulphur Springs property to include home sites and rental cabins. “So the train brought people here, and that’s why there were hotels in Mount Airy.”
Finally, and perhaps most significant, the hotel had that magical spring, that “very fountain of health,” that lured visitors with its touted healing waters. Since as far back as the 1850s, if not earlier, the locals had been frequenting the spring to enjoy the natural, free-flowing elixir, so Roberts had little doubt the spring would draw guests when he built his new hotel near the spring in the late 1880s.
And he was right: The hotel, built to accommodate 150 guests, became somewhat of an oasis, even in its earliest years. In 1892, The Yadkin Valley News reported, “The White Sulphur Springs Hotel is full to overflowing, and we understand that over a hundred guests have been turned away.”
In addition to being a boon to Mount Airy’s tourism industry at the time, the hotel indirectly brought new industry to town. The hotel was also popular among the locals, who frequently gathered there for picnics, church socials, and other functions. An exhibit about the hotel, on display at the Mount Airy Museum of Regional History, states, “Local residents remember dressing to the hilt and riding to the hotel on flatcars outfitted with straight-back chairs. It was not uncommon for the conductor to stop the train for a lady to recover her wind-blown hat.”An open-air, latticed springhouse was built to cover the spring, providing shelter from the elements for those who would come to collect its water. The folkloreabout the spring existed long before the hotel was built. Elsewhere on the hotel’s expansive grounds, guests enjoyed activities such as horseback riding, fishing, rowing, and hunting; and amenities such as walking trails, hammocks, and swings. At the foot of the lawn, overlooking the river, sat a 2,000-square-foot outdoor pavilion that offered dancing upstairs and a bowling alley downstairs, as well as a billiards room. Orchestras and smaller music ensembles frequently played at the pavilion as hotel guests danced in the moonlight. Nearby stood a small gazebo, also within view of the river.
The elegant, three-story hotel itself, with a pair of four-story wings bookending the facility, had a finely appointed front lobby and a massive front porch that stretched the entire length of the hotel. All of the rooms were exquisitely furnished and had electric lights and private baths. Most of them opened onto a wide veranda. “In 1910, the hotel had 165 rooms,” Robertson says. “That’s pretty phenomenal for little ol’ Mount Airy.”
Guests apparently lived and ate well during their stays, too. An 1895 newspaper advertisement listed the rates at $20 per month, or $1.50 per day for adults, and half price for children and servants. In today’s dollars, that’s only $530 a month, or $40 a night.
Unfortunately, as successful as the grand hotel was during its prime, it also seemed to be an ill-fated attraction. Fire destroyed it several times. Each time it burned, someone rebuilt it, and the hotel thrived again. It wasn’t until the mid- to late 1920s that the demise of the White Sulphur Springs Hotel began to occur. The advent of the automobile opened more travel opportunities, and other mountain communities began to compete for tourism dollars.
The Great Depression further crippled the hotel’s future. A July 1929 newspaper article indicated new owners were renovating the hotel and planned to reopen it, but the stock market crashed three months later. Several more attempts to resurrect the hotel were made during the 1930s, but they failed. The hotel was sold in the 1940s and converted into a giant chicken coop, until yet another fire claimed the building — and some 28,500 chickens — in January 1955. One reporter’s obituary for the grand old hotel read, “It began as a gracious resort for the well-to-do in the 1880s and ended as the biggest chicken roast in the country.”
Today, all that remains of the hotel is a row of brick columns where the rear foundation of the building once stood. Though the grounds contain nearby exclusive new home sites and a commercial "event center" for weddings and the like.
Of course, the natural spring down near the banks of the Ararat still survives. Robertson, who’s developing the property, says people still come to the spring daily, seeking its curative waters. “I’ve seen people out here with 20-gallon jugs,” he says. It’s stories such as those that fuel Robertson’s enthusiasm for developing the property. And because he knows he’s been doing his part to preserve a valuable slice of Surry County history, Robertson’s been sleeping soundly.
