Virginia Tech Alumni Association News - Spring 2003

Unravelling the Mysteries of Mountain lake

Most modern scholars and scientists have never believed the stories that Mountain Lake was formed within the "memory of man," that it was a gigantic sink hole, or that its depth was unfathomable; but tradition and legend die hard in Southwest Virginia, where if Great Granddaddy said it was so, it was so. Without any definite proof to the contrary, it has been a case of "whom do you want to believe?"
Now comes the proof, recently discovered in the pages of an unpublished study by Frederick C. Marland, written seven years ago as his doctoral dissertation at Virginia Tech. Although Dr. Marland calls his "History of Mountain Lake" an "interpretation based on paleolimnology (the study of the life of ponds, lakes, and streams through interpretation of fossils)," he also provides some legal documentation to refute Great Granddaddy's claim that there was no lake on Salt Pond Mountain before the 1800's. It's not that Great Granddaddy was a liar; he just wasn't aware of all the facts-or chose to believe the wrong ones.

The first written record of the existence of Mountain Lake appears in the journal of Christopher Gist, a surveyor for the Ohio Land Company, who discovered the lake and surveyed it in May 1751. The vital part of Gist's journal describes the lake much as it is today.

The basic Mountain Lake legend was probably first stated in print in P. H. Nicklin's Letters Descriptive of the Virginia Springs, published in 1837:

It is said that formerly a rivulet which ran through a hollow on top of the mountain made its escape by sinking into the earth. It was a place much frequented by cattle, both tame and wild, for the purpose of quenching their thirst; and in the process of time, it came to pass, that the trampling of many feet pressed down a sufficiency of earth to fill up the crevice, by which the water had previously made its escape; and so the accumulations of the rivulet and the rain gradually submerged the forest and formed a pond.

But Nicklin never visited Mountain Lake; so where did he get his information? It was likely based on the account of Henley Chapman, the first commonwealth's attorney of Giles County, who owned the lake in the early 1800's. Chapman was definitely one of William Pendleton's sources of information. Pendleton visited the elderly Chapman in 1861 and boated with him on the waters of the lake. Pendleton said that, while on the lake, he could see large forest trees still standing beneath the crystal clear water and that Chapman had told him that the trees had been alive and in full foliage in the summers 60 years earlier, when he salted his cattle in the basin before the water began to rise. Whether or not Chapman tried to convince Pendleton that there was never any lake there before it rose in the 1800's, that is the impression that Pendleton took away from his visit.

Without going into an overly technical discussion of the scientific procedures-all of which Marland documents in his dissertation-we find the following likely developmental picture of Mountain Lake:

• A small temporary pond, perhaps fed by a glacier, was formed behind an incomplete slide-rock dam during late-glacial or early post-glacial time 9,000 years ago, and possibly earlier.
• The "modern" lake formed about 2,000 years ago as the damming became more complete.
• Once the "modern" lake was formed, a number of lines of evidence have suggested that Mountain Lake has endured at least two periods of much lower lake levels but that no completely dry periods have occurred.
• The last low level episode, based on sedimentary studies of the lake bottom, probably occurred between 1751 and 1804 (the period between Gist's discovery and the sudden rise mentioned by Kercheval). During this period, the now-submerged trees had their growth. The probable reasons for the low levels were prolonged drought and excessive temporary discharge through the fissures in the rock-slide dam. The lake depends almost completely on precipitation for its survival. In a wet year about 80 percent of the lake water would be renewed.

The Beginnings of the Resort

Although there were many visitors to the Salt Pond throughout the early years of the 19th century, the first serious attempt to turn the place into a resort came when Henley Chapman and several associates were able to have an "Act to incorporate the Mountain Lake Co." passed by the state legislature on March 1, 1856. The Act stated that the "Capital shall not exceed $50,000. The Corporation may acquire and hold lands not exceeding 5,000 acres and have the power to erect buildings for the accommodation of visitors and others, to provide for their entertainment, and receive compensation therefore . . . to improve and cultivate its lands and to conduct and erect saw and other mills."

Soon after the Mountain Lake Company received its charter, it built a wooden hotel and a saw mill. The hotel was used to accommodate stagecoach travelers to and from Christiansburg and Union, West Virginia, in the days before the New River branch of the Norfolk and Western Railroad had been built.

Following the Civil War, the hotel and surrounding property were sold in 1869 to Gen. and Mrs. Herman Haupt of Philadelphia. During the first year of the Haupt ownership, some friends from the North spent several months at the lake and paid the Haupt's for their board. Because of the fact that guests were paying board, the Giles County clerk required the Haupt's to purchase a hotel license; shortly thereafter they decided to open the hotel to the general public once again, and in the first season had so many visitors that the accommodations were entirely inadequate. Some of the guests had to sleep on beds made of straw. Later the Haupts made several additions to the hotel.

With the completion of the New River branch of the railroad in 1883, passengers for Mountain Lake got off the train at Pembroke or Eggleston and were met by horse-drawn hacks for the trip up the old Doe Creek road to the lake. The present paved road (Va. 700) was built many years later over a different route.

For most of the early part of the 20th century the hotel was owned by Gordon T. Porterfield, Giles County commonwealth's attorney, who managed the resort for a short time, later turning management over to his son, Gilbert.

Gilbert Porterfield managed the resort for 25 years, establishing a fine reputation for the hotel's cuisine. During his management individuals were allowed to build cottages for themselves, furnishing them as they wished, with a discount given on their meals at the hotel and on maid service in their cottages. Those who built a cottage were given a 15-year lease after which the cottage and the contents became the property of the resort ownership. Two well-known Virginia authors of the era, James Branch Cabell and Edna Lee Turpin, were among those who built their own cottages at the lake. Virginia Tech and Radford College students still rent the cottages for house parties in the spring.

In 1930 the University of Virginia established a biological station near the lake's northern end to study the many forms of plant life found in the area. William Lewis Moody bought the hotel in the thirties and had the old Wooden hotel torn down, replacing it with the present structure of native stone in 1938. Mrs. Mary Northern, Moody's daughter, is now in charge of the hotel which is open from late spring through early fall. It is hoped that future owners of the resort will have as much concern for the precarious ecology of the lake as does Mrs. Northern. According to Marland, additional development in the area easily could upset the present ecological balance.

For those who have never seen Virginia's only remaining natural lake, the 19-mile trip from Blacksburg is indeed worthwhile.

Note: Virginia Tech also conducts research at the lake in conjunction with the University of Virginia. Following the death of the owner, Mrs. Moody, in 1986, the trustees of her estate established a foundation to maintain and operate the resort. It is open year-round. Additional fame came to the resort in 1987 when the popular movie Dirty Dancing that had been filmed on the property was released. Although currently the lake is in one of its low water level cycles, recent snowfalls and rains have begun to replenish some of the receding levels of the past several years.

Editor's note: Mountain Lake is Virginia's only naturally formed lake, and is several thousand years old. This article about its evolution by the late Jenkins M. Robertson appeared in the Spring, 1974 issue of Context, a forerunner of the Virginia Tech Magazine. Portions of the article are reprinted here in view of the property's significance to many Tech alumni who have visited or stayed in its hotel, held a wedding there, hiked the area, or enjoyed the magnificent fall foliage on a drive to the top of the mountain.