Highland Inn with Sugar Maples
A Museum Quality Print of The Highland Inn with Sugar Maples for sale by Brandywine General Store. This archival, scenic composition shows the historic hotel in the town of Monterey, Virginia with a sugar maple at each end, which are just starting to turn into their fall colors. The Highland Inn was known as The Hotel Monterey until recently and was built in 1904. Silas W. Crummett, a local Highland County businessman, saw the need for a large hotel for all the tourists that were coming to this high elevation mountain town for its cool and healthful climate. It was a difficult trip back in the early 1900s from Richmond, DC and the Shenandoah Valley, so when people made this hard journey, mostly on horseback, they needed a place to stay. It was to far to make this into a day trip. Monterey Virginia has an elevation of around 3,000 feet, so the temperatures here are much cooler than the rest of Virginia, so in the days before air conditioning, the more well to do people would come to Monterey to spend some time during the heat of summer. But with the invention of air conditioning, the mountain resorts such as this one, started seeing a decline in business, with most of these large frame hotels closing their doors. Picture #333 an original historical landscape by Brandywine General Store.