Frankfort Springs

Frankfort Springs

by EDWIN W. DEVITT

Milestones vol 2 No 4--Autumn 1976

Ladies and Gentlemen:

I consider it an exceptional privilege for all of us present here today to participate in an historical marker dedication for a site greatly renowned as a resort and health spa for over one hundred years. And what more appropriate time for it than the year of our country's bicentennial? Of necessity, the history we shall relate, will be a mere sketch.

The "Springs" site was included in a four hundred acre tract of land purchased by Mr. Isaac Stephens, a native of Northern Ireland, in 1784. The tract was known as White Hill. Shortly afterwards, Mr. Stephens sold 12 acres, the springs area, to Edward McGinnis, a keelboatman, who found the waters "healing to my ailment." Mr. McGinnis started building the resort complex in the late 1790's, or about the turn of the century, and is credited with the successful development of the spa. The hotel building was known as the Frankfort House, and probably due to his river boating background, Mr. McGinnis ' designed the building like a steamboat, access to the rooms being gained only from the two ballustrades running the full length of the building on both sides.

According to Harris's Directory, these springs had attained great popularity as a pleasure and health resort as early as 1835. People drove out in buggies and surreys in the summer months from Pittsburgh, Steubenville, Washington, Pa., and other surrounding towns, to drink the waters and to enjoy the society of the place. The best account of the society of the resort is described in the following:

"Here silks and satins were worn and poke bonnets tied down with colored picot edged ribbons and adorned with plumes of many colors. The Springs were gay with the latest patterns from New York, the porches filled with pretty maids and ladies embroidering. At candle-lighting the brass sticks from the old corner cupboard were lighted in the long ballroom arid to the violin strains the polka and the Virginia reel were performed with graceful bows and turns. When the grandfather clock at the foot of the ballroom sounded the stroke of eleven, all lights were snuffed from the candles and the merriment ceased."

The hotel management also ran a livery service during the summer months to the Burgettstown Railroad Station, and advertising literature included the train schedules. The number of guests so increased that Mr. McGinnis could not accommodate them all, and James Dungan then built a three-story brick hotel at the southern end of the village. The record says that Mr. Dungan often had as high as two hundred guests at one time in the months of July and August. He called his hotel the Frankfort Hotel.

Eliza, daughter of Edward McGinnis, sold the springs resort complex in 1884 to an uncle, J. Moore Bigger. He further developed the area, but Bausman said in his history of 1904, "but their day is past, as more fashionable resorts have drawn the patronage elsewhere." Just a few years later, I feel sure Bausman would have added a note about the automobile sounding the-death knell of the resort. With the advent of the automobile, people were enabled to travel longer distances for their pleasure on more improved highways.

About 1895, advertising literature showed H. Walters, Manager. Shortly after the turn of the century, Henry Christman and W. H. Christman are shown as proprietors on advertising brochures. Mr. Hamilton Stephens also apparently operated the resort in the early 1900's.

Mrs. Paul Moore (Stella Kerr) tells us that two Langfitt men, doctors from Pittsburgh, leased the Frankfort Mineral Springs Hotel and encouraged her father, Dr. Kerr, to repair it and open it to their convalescent patients from one of the Pittsburgh hospitals. Her father was just recovering from a heart condition and they all turned in and painted and papered and repaired to make it livable, since it was very run down. They started in the fall of 1898 and were there for 31/2 years until it grew out of hand for them to manage. It was so popular with recovering patients that they wanted to bring their families with them in the summer time, most of them coming from the Sewickley and surburban areas. She clearly remembers that on the New Years eve at the turn of the century, they had a Mr. Bigger come to call after nine o'clock and he said "surely yo are going to stay up to welcome in the new century (1900).

The Beaver County Times of Wednesday, May 24, 1972 in an article relative to the famous resort, stated that some 25 different owners were known to have held the property at various times during the period from 1790 until 1933.

The resort closed down in 1912. However, there was a later attempt at business revival. A Mr. Smith from Pittsburgh set up a bottling operation to sell the water for commercial and personal use, and he instituted restaurant facilities in 1930, specializing in chicken dinners. The restaurant was managed by Mr. & Mrs. Ralph McCracken, natives of the area, until the building burned down in 1932. Mr. Smith was accidentally killed in 1933 and the venture ended.

Frankfort Springs Hotel as it appeared about 1905.

Some of the elements that contributed to the successful operation of the resort for about one hundred years were - THE NATURAL RESOURCES; the forested setting and the beautiful grotto, the mineral waters and their suggested medicinal value. THE GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATION; the relative proximity of Pittsburgh and other nearby towns, and being located just off the Washington-Post Road (now Route #18 and #168), and just off the stage coach road between Pittsburgh and points west, the Lincoln Highway which passed through Frankfort Springs Village. This was the west in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and then the gateway to a further extended west.

This was still a wilderness when this land acquisition was made, - there was a record of wolves den in rocks at or near the springs, and we are told that Levi and Mrs. Dungan left their cabin and stockade (present site of the Ponderosa Golf Course Club House) in the late 1770's for safety because of the Indian incursions. They were away for over a year. Mrs. Dungan had hidden a library of medical books in rocks somewhere in this area, only to find them ruined by dampness when they returned.

Two newspaper articles regarding the resort are of interest:

Beaver, Pa. "Argus" - 25 April, 1849

Edward McGinness petitions for license - "he occupies commodious house at the Mineral Springs, in Hanover Twp., Beaver Co., and is desirous of keeping a public house, for accommodations of travelers and strangers. Certifiers to character, etc., Robert Cooley, James Harper, Robert Bryarly, Farmer Purdy, Robert Stephens, Wm. Carothers, John Roberts, Samuel Leeper, Zach Swearingen, Thomas M'Guire, Samuel M'Guire, Thos. Swearingen."

Beaver, Pa. "Times" - June 13, 1877

"The well known summer resort at Frankfort Springs, this county has been opened up for the season and is now prepared to receive guests. Mr. Ellis Maginnis, who has charge of the hotel, understands how to provide for the comfort of his guests and this in connection with the beautiful scenery, the medical properties of the water, and low prices, should fill the hotel and cottages this season."

There are a few sidelights of the springs area which stand out in my recollections. In 1916, as an eleven year old boy, I recall vividly peering through a crack in the padlocked double doors of the stable at the rows of buggies and surreys parked closely in storage formation, and noting also the empty stalls. On July 4, 1917, 1 pedalled my bike furiously from the village to the springs to view the wreckage of a Hudson Super-six car which was accidentally driven over the cliff and into the ravine at the grotto, killing the married daughter of the operator. A few years later, we boys of the small country high school at Frankfort, came here to practice basketball in the dance hall (having only an outside clay court in the village), which was perched at the top of the hillside above the path to the grotto.

We are deeply indebted to all of those persons who promoted the clean-up and the renewal of this area a few years ago; local individuals, park management and other personnel, and the State of Pennsylvania, as well as Mr. Thomas Walker of Edgeworth who contributed both effort and moneys to provide the museum room at the cottage site.

An excellent post-mortem for the resort area appeared in the Pittsburgh Press, November 5, 1933: "Clear, sparkling waters of seven springs still run from the great, dark cliff, and the waters of the stream still rush over the falls and splash into the little pool below, but the glen is dark and silent. Indians who once frequented the dale to drink the mineral waters, are gone. Only curious visitors and sight seers come to the place nowadays. "