The Great Resort Era
Just how did Western North Carolina become “the” resort venue in the late nineteenth century?
Setting the Stage
Throughout the mid-1800s, well-heeled residents of South Carolina and Georgia routinely visited the mountains of western North Carolina, looking for an escape from the summer heat and humidity of the lowlands.
As the century drew to a close, wealthy Northern aristocrats also began to investigate the area, many at first drawn to the new and seemingly endless supply of timber that had been discovered in Appalacia once northern forests had been tapped out.
However, with leisure pursuits an expected part of “cultured living,” some, like George Vanderbilt, also established large country homes for hosting and entertaining their guests. Others visiting the area were equally intrigued by the idea of seasonal stays in the cool dry mountain air, though the accommodations may have been meager originally.
An 1878 tourism tract bemoaned one fact:
Horse carriages awaiting.
“Our great need is ample hotel accommodations. Our hotel and boarding houses are more than sufficient to care for all the travel that usually visits a place of this size; but we need more extensive hotel accommodations for health and pleasure seekers, both summer and winter. The careful reader is certain to be impressed with the fact, that here is the best unoccupied summer resort in all the country. All that is needed are large hotels, and there would not be any trouble in filling them. The supplies produced right here, of bread stuffs, beef, mutton, pork, game, trout, vegetables and fruits, are such that no other resort can surpass it, as relates to the quality and cheapness of food. Then, the milk and butter of these mountains are nowhere surpassed, and rarely equaled in quality. All this, added to our glorious air, water and scenery, simply make up a total which insures a fortune to hotel keepers who can appreciate the situation. Capitalists would find it profitable to build hotels, boarding houses and cheap cottages, to rent, and can aid others in building, at a profit to themselves.” [1]
The Toxaway Company
Several enterprising gentlemen acted on the rising demand for these middle- and upper-class playgrounds; and a group of mostly Pennsylvanian entrepreneurs (including E. H. Jennings, C.H. Stolzenbach, G.W. Eisenbeis, J.F. Hayes, E.C. Wilson, and E.B. Alsop) established the Toxaway Company.
Among the purposes of the company, as stated in the application for incorporation, were these: ‘to conduct hotels for the accommodation of the public, . . . to keep, manage, conduct, and carry on the business of running hotels, cottages, inns, and restaurants, with their usual and necessary adjuncts, including the running of billiard and pool rooms, bowling alleys, buying and selling liquors and tobacco in all their forms, conducting and leasing news and book stands; baths of all kinds, to conduct livery stables, operating farm and fish hatcheries, to run omnibuses and transfer lines, together with all other pursuits incident to the operation of hotels.’ [2]
They began to heavily promote our tranquil environs, with boasts of soon-to-be-completed new lake resorts that were “Just 22 Hours Ride from New York!” And ‘ride’ was the operative word for the success of these resorts. The remote and mountainous terrain that drew wealthy vacationers here was also the largest obstacle to their arrival, until railroads provided easier access.
As discussed in a previous feature, it was railroad development that provided economic muscle to both the timber industry and tourism.
But first, the Toxaway Company launched a building boom unlike any the area had ever seen.
Local John Nichols III recorded a series of interviews in 2012, including this one with Dick Jennings, the grandson of E.H. Jennings, where he describes how his family became an integral part of the area’s history.
Envisioning the appeal of an American ‘Swiss countryside,’ the group began to construct upscale resorts on either natural or man-made lakes in the valleys between majestic ridges and peaks. Two of the company’s five great resorts were already in existence and bought as part of a land deal – the Sapphire Inn (on Sapphire Lake) and the Lodge at Mount Toxaway. The first big build was the Fairfield Inn (on Lake Fairfield).
Their early efforts to secure land were small: “On Tuesday of this week, a large number of residents of the Toxaway valley came to Brevard and transferred their lands to the Toxaway company at prices from $2 to $5 per acre for unimproved mountain land. The sum of $12,600 changed hands, and most of this money will now go into the channels of trade in this and adjoining counties.”[3]
By a year later, in the fall of 1897, it was suggested that approximately a quarter of a million dollars [$7.5M in today’s dollars] had so far been expended in the construction of roads, hotels, and lakes around the land near Sapphire Lake, Fairfield Lake, and Mount Toxaway.
A writer for The Western North Carolinan Times notes in November 1902, as the dam on Lake Toxaway was being constructed, that “…We may take this opportunity of mentioning that the Toxaway Co., the enterprising proprietors of the vast domain which we have been traveling for several hours – a property of 26,000 acres – have over forty miles of graded road penetrating their estate, and that there are some 28 bridges and several hundred curves along the route, requiring, as may be imagined, considerable care and work to supervise and to keep up in such a way as to render driving a pleasant experience, instead of a continual and almost unendurable jolt and struggle, as journeys on mountain roads too often are. In all, we understand there are about 600 men working in one capacity or another on the company’s property…”
Noted photographer of the time, R. Henry Scadin, was employed by the Toxaway Company and published a short piece about their plans for Lake Toxaway in The Photographic Times, Vol. 29, in January 1897.
A NEW RESORT, By R. Henry Scadin
“Down here in the mountains of Western North Carolina is being started by a company of Northern capitalists a resort which, if nothing happens to upset their calculations, will, in a few years be noted. Beautiful mountain scenery and pretty waterfalls are to be found in every direction. Roads and bridle paths are being constructed to all points of interest, and people who enjoy walking and climbing rocks can find endless amusement at it about here, and your humble correspondent adorned with hob-nailed shoes, canvass [sic] leggings hunting jacket and a 5 x 7 camera, rambles through the forests, over the mountains, and, along the river courses, taking views for the company to advertise with when the proper time comes Mount Toxaway (or Hog-back) is the principal one of just this section. Its elevation is something over 5,000 feet. The summit is large and flat enough to locate a good-sized town on, and the views in all directions are fine. On clear days the coast line of South Carolina can be seen.
On the north of this mountain lies an unbroken forest of over 3,000 acres. Deer, bear, and even panthers are at home in its fastnesses. The game is protected. At one place on the property there is a natural basin, and a scheme is on foot to dam the stream which flows through it. If this is done a lake with a shore margin of 18 or 20 miles will be formed, and which will be deep enough to run a steamer on. Arms of this lake will reach up in picturesque canons, where, in places the rocks will tower up from the water to a height of 1,000 feet. At other points the shore will be a gradual slope, lined with the forest and its carpet of dark green ferns. It will be as lovely as anything in Switzerland and what a place for the lover of scenery! be he painter, poet, or photographer.
Besides the landscape attractions, there are quaint people living in these mountains whose habits of life and methods of business are as strange to denizens of other sections, as are those of a foreign people. I hope to secure some photos characteristic of their home life when I get better acquainted, and if our kind editor should again invite me to contribute to “The Annual” next year. I may have something of that kind to offer.
In conclusion I would say that we are 27 miles from a railroad and a day’s journey by rail and stage from the noted city of Asheville. The air here is pure, cool, and never sultry, and is a beneficial climate for overworked portrait photographers to resort to, and calm down their shattered nerves by inhaling ozone and eating (perhaps catching) speckled trout.”
R. HENRY SCADIN, “A NEW RESORT,” THE PHOTOGRAPHIC TIMES, JANUARY 1897, P. 22
AVAILABLE IN ITS ORIGINAL FORM AT HTTPS://BABEL.HATHITRUST.ORG/CGI/PT?ID=NYP.33433072165081;VIEW=1UP;SEQ=7
Scadin was, of course, referring to the next and granddaddy construction project of them all, the creation of the Appalachian’s largest man-made lake and its majestic centerpiece, the Toxaway Inn, which opened in 1903.
The Toxaway Company’s fifth hotel property, Brevard’s swanky Franklin Hotel, was completed in between (1900). This build fulfilled a promise (in exchange for local support of a $25,000 bond to improve the rail system) and while hosting visitors to the town of Brevard, it also served as an entry point to the companies’ other properties in “Little Switzerland.”
A 1900’s era map shows, from left, the location of four of the Toxaway Hotels: the Fairfield Inn; the Sapphire Inn; the Lodge at Mount Toxaway; and the Toxaway Inn (the Franklin Hotel in Brevard is not pictured here). Note the Transylvania Turnpike, completed in 1890, which connected Brevard to Cashiers. To view in more detail, right click on the image and open in a new tab. Map courtesy of Transylvania County Library, Rowell Bosse North Carolina room.
The Boom Years…
Hayes and his group were quite the promoters and advertised extensively in New York and Philadelphia newspapers of the time. The railroads, partners in the new endeavor since the guests of the resorts would also be their passengers, crowed about the new resorts too.
According to an early 1900s Washington Post report, “A year ago what is now Lake Toxaway was a deep gorge in the mountains, heavily timbered and of little or no use to mankind. And now the Southern Railway is pushing the ‘sapphire country’ along with Asheville and the ‘land of the sky.”
Newspapers of today likely wouldn’t print much of what was indeed “pushed” on the readers of the era. Take this flowery example from the Sylvan Valley News, May 8, 1903:
“To attempt an accurate description of Lake Toxaway and its surroundings is most presumptuous. Mere words fail to convey the true beauties of this magnificent section – we only hope to excite the curiosity of the pleasure seeker and cause him to decide to visit The Sapphire Country and see for himself. We shall confine our descriptions to plain every day language; no flights of poesy are needed in this case and none will be indulged in. Furthermore, every word is based on the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. No one can truthfully say after reading this article and knowing the country that we have even exaggerated. In fact, no one, however talented in flow of language, could ever state the beauties of this section. Both the natural and the man-made attractions are too pleasing for anyone to be disappointed.” [4]
Apparently, people of the time took these messages, hyperbolic as they were, to heart. In two years, from 1897-1899, Brevard’s population doubled, from 150 to 300. Transylvania County residency also doubled from 1870 to 1900.[5]
By all accounts, the resorts stayed busy for over a decade, particularly the Toxaway Inn, whose guest register featured such luminary visitors as lumber baron Edward Baccus, automotive giants Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone, inventor Thomas Edison, R.J. Reynolds of tobacco fame, George Vanderbilt of the nearby Biltmore Estate, and many others.
…And the Unfortunate Bust
But the heady resort heyday in western North Carolina did not last. The Toxaway Company – which clearly overextended itself with their multiple undertakings – eventually failed, then was bought out of receivership in 1908 by its largest shareholder, E. H. Jennings, who struggled to continue the company’s original vision. Then, in 1916, the dam at Lake Toxaway broke after heavy rains and the lake washed out, leaving the great resort (and its new owner) high and dry.
It would be many years before the revival of the lake and region. That’s another story, coming soon.
There are many variations of this story available online and in print, but probably the most well-developed and authoritative reckonings exist in two books by Jan C. Plemmons, Treasures of Toxaway (1984) and Ticket to Toxaway (2004). We highly recommend them.
