Resort hotel · Capon Springs, West Virginia · Built c. 1850 (bath pavilions); Main House 1887; Hampshire Cottage c. 1892
Capon Springs
Listed on the National Register as Capon Springs Historic District
A mountain spring resort in a narrow glen of Great North Mountain, laid out in 1787 as the Town of Watson, with Greek Revival bath pavilions of about 1850 and porch-wrapped Victorian guest houses of the 1880s–90s.
History
Local history says a hunter named Henry Frye came upon the spring about 1765, and for a time it was called Frye's Springs. The land reverted to Virginia when its owner, Joseph Watson, died without heirs, and in 1787 the General Assembly platted the spring and about twenty acres as the Town of Watson, with lots sold by state-appointed trustees. By 1833 the historian Samuel Kercheval found seventeen or eighteen scattered houses and a boarding house for fifty or sixty visitors, and the trustees taxing guests for use of the bath. In 1849 a Baltimore firm bought twelve lots and built the four-story Mountain House, finished in 1851 and said to hold 500 guests, while the state paid for brick bath pavilions and a reservoir. President Franklin Pierce visited in 1854. The debt from all this building closed the resort at the start of the Civil War.
In 1875 William H. Sale, a former Confederate captain, reopened the Mountain House and gradually bought the whole town. He added the Annex (now the Main House) in 1887, Hampshire Cottage around 1892, a bowling alley and in 1879 a spring-fed oval swimming pool. His son-in-law Charles F. Nelson bought the spring and baths from the state of West Virginia in 1905, but fire destroyed the Mountain House in 1911. Will Atkinson, owner from 1917, built the stone spring house and bottled the water. In the 1930s Louis Austin rebuilt the resort's fortunes, adding the stone entrance gateposts and a dining wing, and his family kept the property.
“Only one confirmed Presidential visit is documented in the Capon Springs records; that of Franklin Pierce in 1854.”
Architecture
The c. 1850 bath complex is the oldest group: two long brick wings in five-course American bond, once divided into thirty-two private bathrooms, flanking the central Bath House Cottage, now the President's Cottage. All have flat roofs behind front parapets with applied laurel wreaths, a long portico and restrained Greek Revival detail, including a door with transom and sidelights framed in fluted trim with corner blocks. The Main House of 1887 is a three-story, seven-bay frame building wrapped in three tiers of porches with square posts and sawn balustrades. Hampshire Cottage, about 1892, is a two-story weatherboarded house with a cupola and double-deck porches. The 1920s octagonal spring house is built of native sandstone below the cliffs.
What to look for
- Laurel-wreath parapets on the Greek Revival bath pavilions
- Three tiers of porches on the 1887 Main House
- Octagonal sandstone spring house under the cliffs
- Spring-fed oval pool of 1879
- Stone "Capon Springs" gateposts of the 1930s
Setting
The resort occupies a deep, narrow glen on the west side of Great North Mountain in eastern Hampshire County, along a single road with stone gateposts at its northern entrance. A broad lawn spreads in front of the main buildings, the spring rises beneath towering rock cliffs at the north end, and from the south the approach climbs a winding one-lane mountain road. Cottages and service buildings are tucked into the hillsides.
Timeline
- c. 1765Henry Frye finds the spring
- 1787Town of Watson platted around the spring
- 1851Mountain House hotel completed; state bath pavilions built
- 1875William H. Sale reopens the resort
- 1887Annex, now the Main House, built
- 1911Fire destroys the Mountain House
- 1930sLouis Austin revives the resort
Where sources differ
- Wikipedia describes the Mountain House as a 168-room hotel; the nomination says it could accommodate 500 people.
- Wikipedia gives the listing year as 1994; the National Register date is November 12, 1993.
- The 1765 discovery by Henry Frye is local tradition.
