This advertisement was created about 1878 when Captain Phillip Brown was hired to manage the Blue Ridge Springs Hotel. Native Americans shared the spring with early travelers and it became very popular. As time passed the area became known as Flukes. Then in 1866 a newly built hotel took over the Fluke train depot and the name was changed to Blue Ridge Springs. The resort went through many changes until Mary Hastings became the proprietor in 1934. She was killed by a man she hired, Major Robert C. Kent. He was tried in Fincastle in the Botetourt County Courthouse and pleaded insanity. He was sentenced to 13 years in the penitentiary, where he died in 1937. In 1939, the Blue Ridge Springs Hotel was burned by arson. Today, only the ruins of the spring house survive on private property. This and other pictures of the resort are upstairs in the Botetourt History Museum.
~ Botetourt Museum of History & Culture
