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The West Virginia Encyclopedia
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The West Virginia Encyclopedia
The Cheat Mountain Club, located on 188 acres eight miles north of Durbin, was built in 1887 by the Cheat Mountain Sportsmen’s Association as a private hunting and fishing lodge. This Randolph County lodge, surrounded by the Monongahela National Forest, once provided a mountain getaway for Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and Harvey Firestone early in the 20th century. The club was built on railroad property with a 60-year lease, and at the end of that term, in 1947, the Western Maryland Railroad took possession. The Mower Lumber Company purchased the property in 1963 as a private hunting lodge and retreat. In 1987, four families bought the Cheat Mountain Club and opened the lodge and its environs to the public. Today the old lodge operates as a rustic inn, available to groups by special arrangement.
The three-story lodge has rooms with private baths and other rooms with shared baths. Narrow, steep steps lead to other sleeping quarters in the third floor loft. A giant fieldstone fireplace dominates the living room, which is filled with sofas and chairs. The decor shows the club’s origin as a hunting lodge. Deer antlers, a boar’s head, and other trophies adorn the walls. When Ford, Edison, and Firestone visited in August 1918, the walls were covered with paper outlines of trophy trout caught in the nearby stream. Rock-strewn Shavers Fork runs behind the building, with cut stone steps leading down into the pool created by a low dam.
Written by Maureen F. Crockett