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The West Virginia Encyclopedia
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The West Virginia Encyclopedia
The Glen Ferris Inn at Glen Ferris, Fayette County, is one of West Virginia’s oldest. The original Federal-style vernacular building that still can be seen beneath a 1910 Classical Revival remodeling has hosted travelers since at least 1839, when it was a popular stagecoach stop on the James River & Kanawha Turnpike, now U.S. 60. During the Civil War, the building was a U.S. Army quartermaster depot from July through December, 1861. It was also headquarters of owner Aaron Stockton’s several enterprises, including farming, timbering, and sawmills, flatboat building, and one of West Virginia’s earliest commercial coal mining operations. The Glen Ferris Inn stands at the landmark falls of the Great Kanawha River, the point at which early navigation began.
Stockton, whose grandfather, Richard, was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, bought the property in 1817. A 1915 Fayette County newspaper account quotes a Stockton family member as saying the house was built by two Irishmen in 1815. Stockton first applied for a license to serve alcohol to guests in 1839. The inn prospered until 1874, when the recently completed C&O Railway began delivering travelers to the new Kanawha Hotel on the other side of the river.
Known first as Stockton’s Tavern, then informally as Hawkins Hotel, the inn remained in the Stockton family until 1920, when it was sold to a subsidiary of Union Carbide. It then became known as the Glen Ferris Inn. After 1981, it belonged to Elkem Corporation, which purchased Union Carbide’s industrial operations in the area. The property was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1991. In 1996 it was purchased by a Glen Ferris couple, who sold it to National Guard officers Brig. Gen. Harrison Gilliam and Maj. Thomas Willis in 2017. Guest accommodations include 15 rooms and two suites, the Old Stockton Dining Room, and a Riverside Dining Room.
Read the National Register of Historic Places nomination.
Written by Rebecca Halstead Kimmons