Three Days to Launch

Only three more days and this project,

Lessons Learned:

The Story of Pilot Mountain School

will launch out into the world.

Counting down to next Tuesday's launch, today I'm at three. Three, a cheerful number, odd, rounded.

I searched through the book for the number three and found this, the number of stories in this hotel. What place does this hotel have in the history of this school? Read on.
Deep in the South Mountains, long before Pilot Mountain School was even considered, sat the largest wood framed hotel in the western part of the state. Three stories high, it was a majestic piece of architecture set in a beautiful location. A Scottish merchant traveling through the South Mountains during construction suggested that it deserved an equally majestic name. Glen Alpine.


Glen Alpine Springs Hotel

It opened in 1878. Even though it boasted a promenade around the top, a billiards room, even though there were large bedrooms with high ceilings for cooling in the summer, an orchestra for dancing, a dining hall that seated two hundred, even though the nearby mineral springs offered healing, it could not stay financially viable and closed before the turn of the twentieth century. It became a boarding school, a mission to the children of the community. That, too, was unsuccessful. It became the county poor house, a haven for the homeless. It burned to the ground in 1936, but its legends lived on in the stories I caught. No one I interviewed had seen it in person, most of them were born after it was destroyed. One by one, however, they told me of hiking to the foundation, of sitting on the front steps to nowhere, of imagining what life was like once upon a time inside this elegant yet doomed building.

Just one of the stories I caught. Can't wait for you to read the rest.

Three more days until the book will be released.

Catch of the day,

Gretchen