Icons of the National Road, Part 3. The arrival of the B&O Railroad to the Allegheny Mountains in the mid-1800s unlocked the region’s timber and mineral wealth and created droves of millionaires virtually overnight. While much of Central Appalachia was deforested, scorched, and scarred beyond recognition by their greed, the newly-minted wealthy built grand “porch hotels” near mineral springs and railroad towns to celebrate their rising fortunes and rub elbows with other prominent entrepreneurs, such as Henry Ford, Thomas Edison and Harvey Firestone, who traveled in on trains from points far and wide. With their sweeping verandas and hoity-toity appointments, these porch hotels thrived from the late 1800s into the early 1900s, when train travel declined following the widespread availability of automobiles and paved highways. A century later, very few of the original porch hotels remain standing. One of them, the Summit Inn, is open for business and well worth a visit. The sprawling hotel nestles into a gentle nook on the summit of Chestnut Ridge overlooking Uniontown, Pennsylvania. On a clear day, you can see all the way to Pittsburgh fifty miles to the north.
