Blue Ridge Country September/October 2021 - 27

Story and photos by SU CLAUSON-WICKER
W
LEFT: The Hanging
Rock Observatory atop
Peters Mountain has
recorded up to 3,000
hawks and eagles on a
fall migration day.
ABOVE LEFT: The
former Pence Springs
Resort is now a girls'
boarding school.
ABOVE RIGHT: The
Pence Springs pump
remains.
ith its twisty rivers, old
mineral spring resorts,
covered bridges and stunning
mountain backdrops,
southeastern West
Virginia has to be a contender
for the title of " Scenic
Drive Capital of the U.S. " All manner
of neat stuff shows up in your view when
you're tooling along two-lane roads at
an unhurried pace. Carroty turk's cap lilies,
for instance. Or a highway sign in a
secluded valley noting the home of the
first U.S. woman journalist.
My nirvana is a rolling retreat in West
Virginia, a 160-mile, two-day ramble
through Monroe, Summers, and Greenbrier
counties on routes 3, 219, 122, 12, 63,
and 92. The tour wanders past a Mennonite
bakery, a hawk-watching observatory,
a memorial to a legendary steel-driving
man, and West Virginia's oldest general
store. It meanders into a formerly Confederate
town named Union and flower-filled
burg with its own Carnegie Hall. This is
the kind of variety you find on backroads
in West Virginia.
The route is punctuated with pull-off
picnic areas built 70 years ago, and the
eateries are the one-of-a-kind, family variety.
The roadsides pop with blue and
yellow wildflowers, and the radio stations
coming in best are West Virginia
Mountain Radio and country out of Roanoke,
Virginia.
Before the Civil War, this was the
place to come for the healing spring water
and to rub shoulders with well-heeled
society. Now folks visit to escape society,
and the healing comes from outdoor recreation,
relaxation, and immersion in
hay-scented beauty.
Sweet, Sweet Springs
I get off the beaten path-Interstate 64-
at Exit 183 and head, not toward The
Greenbrier (which is a, sniff, rather young
resort), but south on U.S. 311 toward the
older Sweet Springs. Its grand lodge juts
up from the rural landscape like a West
Virginia Versailles. Thomas Jefferson is
reputed to have designed the 1839 Georgian
Colonial hotel, and George Washington
most certainly did spend the night
here-many times-as did James Madison,
Patrick Henry and Gen. Robert E.
Lee. Virginia Governor John Floyd sleeps
here still, in a cemetery at across the road.
The massive lodge, remnants of the
classical bath house, and several two-story
guest houses now stand empty while
a nonprofit foundation raises the funds
to save the structures and create a park
which will put the hotel back in business.
" Old Sweet, " as it was called, drew
celebrities and noted statesmen before
the Civil War, while nearby Salt Sulphur
attracted the partiers and Red Sulphur
Springs (of which nothing remains) the
seriously ill. The younger Pence Springs
appealed to those who sought a soak and
others who disappeared into the basement
for a Prohibition-era nip.
Old Sweet, with her 100,000-squarefoot
lodge, was the crown jewel of southern
West Virginia
springs. When the
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021 27
DAVID LEE
Blue Ridge Country September/October 2021

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