Piedmont Springs

The house that I grew up in was built on land that had previously been a farm.  Such that when my family moved in 30 some years ago, there was still a barn and several outbuildings almost in our backyard, and we would often find old rusty nails and horseshoes.  My dad, dreamer that he is, had a couple of gardens: one for corn and another for tomatoes, squash (ick!), sugar peas (also ick!), etc. I used to treasure hunt in the gardens and find broken bits of china in addition to these. I guess when you don't have a local Goodwill to run to or a sanitation service, you just chuck your old bits of broken china under the house.  I saved them for a while in an old box in the garage...not sure if they were ever discovered by my parents. and they may still be there as far as I know.  I also seem to remember saving some old cicada exoseletons in that same box. It's possible that they were not quite as interesting, but it seemed like a good thing to collect when I was 10.

My sister and I took a little jaunt around Stokes county on Sunday to pick up something she wanted from her husband's grandmother's house.  That was our cover anyway.  I worked in Stokes county until about five years ago and loved it.  Although a larger county in North Carolina geographically, it has a relatively small population and it seems like everyone really does know everyone else.  That's good and bad, I suppose.  And since that's where my husband's family is from, everyone seemed to already know me by proxy.  Anyway, it's a beautiful rural, Appalachia county and there are lots of beautiful sights to be seen and photographed.

Kristen, the Sis, likes historical places, too, and she found out about a mineral springs resort near the county seat that first existed over 150 years ago.  Turns out, there were actually three mineral springs resorts in that area: Moore's Springs (which is now a campground with only the springhouse left):

Moore's Springs Hotel

Vade Mecum (which now has one remaining original building from the resort and is part of a Sertoma camp):


Cheshire Hall. Only original surviving hotel from Vade Mecum Springs
Photo from here

 and Piedmont Springs which burned to the ground in 1929.  Poor old Piedmont Springs.  It's just a big old pile of kudzu-covered rubble now, and if you are not from the south and have never encountered kudzu, let me just tell you that it is ivy on crack.  Ain't no way in the world you are getting me up on that hill in the middle of summer (re: Snake Season).

Piedmont Springs Hotel

We walked up the kudzu mountain on Sunday and poked around a bit in the piles.  There were lots of brick piles, and it was kind of hard to discern what was what, although Kristen was pretty sure what different areas of the hotel would have been based on her past ummm...research (no, officer!  NOT exploration!).  She showed me where she thinks the kitchen was, and you know what?  You just pull that kudzu away just a bit and you find all kinds of pieces of china like the bit pictured above with a little bit of the word "Piedmont" on it.  Kristen assures me that there are all kinds of treasures to be found there like old rusty silverware, door knobs, bit of china and glasses, nails, etc.  She didn't show me where the actual springs were, and I'm not sure if she even really knows, but there is a small "pool" in a creek just down the hill and across the road that I think could very well be the "pool" built in the Piedmont's final year.

The hotel was built three times between 1850 and 1929 - from a log cabin, to a 150-room resort, to a smaller 50-room resort with a fireplace in every room and a swimming pool at the creek.  There were originally two springs there.  One had clear water and the other had a darker, sulphur water that was assumed to have healing properties.  And before the roads were as readily developed and car transportation was not as easily attained, the mineral springs resorts were the hot spots for semi-local travelers to escape the summer heat in the somewhat cooler mountain air in the early 1900s.

And let's be frank: we still need cooler summer temperatures and the power of a healing medicinal brew today, too.  Only in this high tech age of the 21st century, we just call it "bought air" and "sweet tea."