Greenbrier County, West Virginia - 160th Anniversary Booklet - Part 11

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Historical Booklet - Greenbrier County
160th Anniversary - 1778-1938
Published 1938
Transcribed by Lori Samples <dawg @mail.us-net.com>


THE FAMOUS SPRINGS OF GREENBRIER
<Caption at the beginning.....>
Colonel Crow's Tavern - near the junction of the Midland Trail and the Old
Sweet Road stand this tavern, once a famous meeting place for parties from
"Old White" and "Old Sweet Springs"

In all the world, no section of it has enjoyed the popularity of American
society as has the spring country of the Virginias.  Before the days of the
railroad, before surfaced highways...before there were any transportation
facilities except the coach-and-four and the lumbering stage coach pulled
over rough dusty tracks, the springs of West Virginia enjoyed the patronage
of the society of the South and the North.  They came during the nineteenth
century in great hoards, hundreds of them,  bearing up gayly under the
strain  of difficult travel, to spend their days or weeks at the many
springs.

Hub of a great part of the activity of the section was, is and will be White
Sulphur Springs, with its magnificent Greenbrier Hotel, justifiably called
America's most beautiful all-year resort.  Since 1778, this gracious spa has
existed in Greenbrier County a source of pride to the County, to the State
of West Virginia, and an able competitor of the best of Europe's renowned
watering places.

Its present glory is something far different from that  early summer day one
hundred sixty years ago when White Sulphur Springs had its first white
patient.  She was a Mrs. Anderson, from over the mountains eastward
hopelessly and painfully crippled with rheumatism.  Carried over the virgin
hills in a crude litter slung between two sweating horses, this Mrs.
Anderson was brought to the spring in the forlorn hope its fabulous waters,
long known by the Indians, would have some effect on her ills.  Arrived at
the wooded glen one of the party felled a great tree, deftly hollowed it out
with his axe.  Waters from the sulphur springs was ladled into this crude
tub, heated with white stones from a nearby fire.  Into this primitive bath,
Mrs. Anderson was laid and cured.  The fame of her quick cure was soon to
spread over all the land and people from all stations in life flocked to
this "lion of the Virginia mountains, where votaries of pleasure are willing
to be crushed to death to obtain a chance of laying their offerings on the
shrine that fashion has set up in this happy valley."

Peregrine Prolix, a popular "columnist" of the day wrote this tribute in
1834, after The Springs had been established as a spa of first importance
when it could accomodate nearly a thousand persons, who were "crushed to
death" in the gay exciting seasons.

    Fanned by the dreams and vision of James Calwell, White Sulphur Springs
    was developed and enlarged and improved. In 1858, the famous Old White, one
    of the greatest landmarks among hotels in this entire nation, was opened to an
    incredulatous world. Nothing like that rambling, wooden Georgian
    building had ever been seen and this new magnificence at the springs wrought
    a new bonanza in the broad fertile valley that houses White Sulphur Springs.

Until the war between the states, the Old White's fame paled the reputation
of its sister spas in the section.  The whole world, it seemed, wanted its
holiday at the hotel and we are told of gay, fancy young men giving up their
quarters to the ladies and sleeping on lawns, in corridors, yes, even on the
billiard tables of the game rooms.

All this life died a sudden and inglorious death with the first gun of the
Civil War and Prolix's votaries of pleasure retired to the more grim business
of waging a vain war.  White Sulphur suffered its scars in that holocaust
and at one point almost came to a sad end.

In June of 1864, General David Hunter retreated westward from Lynchburg, his
object the Kanawha Valley. Arriving at White Sulphur Springs en route, he
camped his men for the night, using the stables for his horses, the
magnificent Old White for his men.  In the morning orders were issued that
the place was to be destroyed by fire immediately upon their departure.
Senator Henry DuPont of Deleware, attached to Hunter's division as chief of
artillery, heard of these orders and, having been a frequent visitor to the
spa in previous years, determined to save this great palace of pleasure.  He
resorted to military logic as the proper way in which to change the mind of
his superior.  Appealing to Hunter on the grounds that the hotel would make
an ideal barrack and even hospital, that it stood on the convergence of many
roads, and that its destruction might be a tacktical error, DuPont succeeded
in having the destruction orders countermanded.  Greenbrier County and West
Virginia shall always be in the DuPont's family's debt for this
demonstration of affection.

While White Sulphur Springs enjoyed its zeniths of popularity, there were
other springs in the vicinity which also had their seasons of pomp and
gaiety.  Among them, Sweet Springs stood out.  Its gracious buildings, its
springs, its beautiful valley made Old Sweet, as it is known today, a
friendly rival of White Sulphur.

Beautiful belles and gallant beaux enjoyed the hospitality of the gracious
resort, danced the graceful waltz, picnicked on its spacious grounds, made
side trips through the mountains.  The main building was designed by Thomas
Jefferson.  The buildings stand today in lonely grandeur, a lovely and
pathetic monument to a pleasant past.

Nearby stood Sweet Chalybeate, it's long rambling wooden buildings once the
scene of colorful. laughing colonies of holiday markers. Others were Blue
Sulphur which between 1835 and 1840 threatened to usurp some of the glory of
White Sulphur, Salt, Red,  Gray and Green Sulphur...all spas that once had
their day and now, for reasons many of which are unknown, sunken into decay
and ruin and ignominy.  The coming of the railroad to White Sulphur Springs
assured its further life and by the same token, sounded the curfew of these
other playgrounds.  It came at a time when automobiles were not dreamed of
and the new-fangled steam carriages were the most popular form of
transporation.  By comparison with the all-but-springless stage coaches,
they were comfortable, if unclean and slow and it was only logical that
people in search of vacation and rest should take the railroad to whatever
spa the rails touched, putting the others aside and out of mind.

Greenbrier County is proud of its spas, its springs and its glory and fame
they have brought to its hills and valleys.  It is proud of White Sulphur
and for what that noble place stand and, seeing it, the citizens are
reminded of graceful words of Mark Pencil, written in 1839: "The whole face
of things has the look of enchantment, as if the inhabitants of some fairy
isle were turning out to welcome the coming of expected strangers/"

<Caption..>
SINCE 178
The fountain is covered with a stately Doric dome, sustained by twelve large
pillars, and surmounted with a colossal statue of Hygeia, looking towards the
rising sun.

NEXT:  EARLY COURTS AND JUDGES OF GREENBRIER