The Hotel

In 1853, Benjamin Wilkes, Sr. bought the Peaks of Otter from a Mr. Thompson, paying one dollar an acre for 2,700 acres.

The following is an excerpt from Bedford County, Virginia, 1840-1860, a book found in the Virginia room at the Roanoke City main library.

EARLY TOURISM

Wilkes epitomizes the entrepreneurial spirit of pioneer America and obviously had faith in the growth potential of the Peaks area. As early as 1849, Wilkes was granted a license to keep a House of private entertainment,” which he ran with the help of one of his sons, Leyburn Wilkes, According to one source, they apparently succeeded in putting nearby Polly Wood’s ordinary out of business.” A fictionalized account of the conflict between Wilkes and Polly Woods, based on research, probably is near the truth:

... That Wilk’s is rel sneaky n’ tricksy, too ... He got a team ‘n’ wagon ‘n’ went t’ Buchanan ‘n’brung the, people up’t his hotel, went ‘t Liberty,’n’ brung more right up’t his hotel ‘n’ took ‘em right a-past by, ‘th’out e’en lookin’ in! ‘N’ I call that sneaky! Calls ‘em tourists, now, not e’en travelers anymore.’-

Note: the “ordinary”, a small cabin, is still standing and is a tourist attraction at the Peaks of Otter, today a national park. An actor plays Polly on weekends during the main season.

Wilkes had discovered the boom of the tourist trade, and he and his son moved quickly to Capitalize on it. In 1853, just one year after the Johnson family acquired the farm property on Harkening Hill, Wilkes petitioned the General Assembly for permission to construct toll roads up to Flat Top and Sharp Top to collect monies from the increasingly numerous sightseers.” By 1855, Leyburn Wilkes had acquired a license for “wine and ardent spirits to be drunk and sold” at the ordinary,

Then in 1857, Leyburn Wilkes began to build the first hotel in the area, called the Otter Peaks Hotel, with accommodations for 50 people.” A local resident of the area at the time, John W. Early, described the complex as consisting of “Hotel, cabin with four rooms—eight rooms in the Hotel—store house with two rooms—another cabin of two rooms—kitchen—smokehouse—Springhouse—an overseer’s house—wagoner’s house—corn house and large stable—and a rock house on top of the Peaks (Sharp Top] with tin roof.”” A visitor to the hotel, Henry Morgan, described his experience this way:

In less than half a mile from the spring we come to the celebrated “Otter Peak’s House” kept by Mr. Leyburn Wilkes. Better accommodations, more prompt and ready service, and amid more delightful scenery could not be desired. Mr. Wilkes is a young man, kind and affable, whose chief delight is to make the visitors cheerful and happy. He owns both of these mountains, which in time must prove a source of incalculable wealth. His buildings multiply with the increase of travel, and no labor or expense will be spared to make this the most attractive watering place in America. The air is cool and salubrious, and in the hottest season an exhilarating breeze sweeps through the mountain pass, while the low lands of the State are parched, sultry and infected”.

By the time the Wilkeses built their hotel, the Peaks of Otter area had been a thriving tourist destination for many years for many of the reasons given by Morgan. There was road access into the area, a way to escape the heat and disease of the lowlands in summer, and the kind of "sublime" scenery so attractive to the Romantic imagination Of the late eighteenth an early nineteenth centuries. Many tourists, the famous and the forgotten, were well acquainted with the Peaks of Otter by the 1850s.

Among the famous was Thomas Jefferson, who wrote about his measurements of the Peaks in his Notes on the State of Virginia, published in 1785." An often-repeated story, perhaps apocryphal, is attributed to John Randolph, the eccentric Congressman from Roanoke in the early 1800s. Randolph supposedly spent the night on Sharp Top, accompanied by a servant, and when he saw the sunrise from such a majestic height, he told his servant "never to believe anyone who says here is no God. A more interesting version of the story is recounted in Morgan's Peaks of Otter, With Sketches and Anecdotes of Patrick Henry, John Randolph, and Thomas Jefferson, and Other Distinguished Men, Who Have Visited the Peaks of Otter, or resided in That Part of the State (1853). Morgan says:

Since the wild savage from these heights has ceased to sound the war whoop for his assembled Chiefs, comparatively few persons have visited them until the last few years. Indeed, for want of roads, they have been almost inaccessible; none but the adventurous would attempt their ascent, yet Randolph, Jefferson and Patrick Henry found the pleasure of watching the stars and the rising sun, and of gazing upon their respective plantations in the interminable plains below, to exceed the fatigue and exposure of the journey. When the rising sun burst its sea of glory upon the keen eye of John Randolph, and lit up the mountain with burnished gold, he pointed his long bony finger towards the east ("that Javelin of Rhetoric") and exclaimed to his companions: "here let the infidel be convinced in a Deity.

Vincent Wilkes, 1999