FLAMES DESTROY HEALTH RESORT.

Danville, Va., April 16 -- The beautiful Mecklenburg hotel, at Chase City, 70 miles east of this city, on the Keysville and Durham branch of the Southern railway, was totally destroyed by fire this afternoon. The hotel was an expensive frame structure, built ten years ago by the Mecklenburg Springs Corporation, at a cost, including furnishings, of $200,000. At the time of the fire it was owned by the estate of M. L. T. DAVIS, of Norfolk, and was leased and managed by W. T. HUGHES, who had conducted it for several years. The owners carried only $70,000 insurance on the hotel and equipment. Only about thirty guests were registered at the hostelry at the time of the fire. The structure, situated on an eminence just outside of town, had two hundred guest chambers, all well furnished.
The flames were discovered by guests on the lawn who saw smoke issuing from the slate roof, and the alarm was given immediately, but the fire-fighting facilities were wholly inadequate to cope with the fiercly raging fire. All of the guests escaped and the most of them saved all of their personal belongings before the fire reached the lower floors of the structure, but much of the furniture in the upper rooms was thrown from windows and destroyed or battered. The employees and guests of the hotel, supplemented by the fire department of the town of Chase City, strove in vain to stay the progress of the fire, but the building burned like tinder.
The Mecklenburg had been a health and pleasure resort for a decade, and many from all over the country sought it because of the medicinal quality of the mineral waters.

The Atlanta Constitution Georgia 1909-04-17
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Researched and Transcribed by Stu Beitler. Thank you, Stu!