Glen-Ella Springs Hotel

Set in a valley of the Blue Ridge Mountains near Tallulah Falls, this frame hotel grew in three stages from a c. 1870 farmhouse built by the Davidson family. A three-story residence hall followed around 1885 and a two-story middle section around 1900. Pine floors and paneling, fieldstone foundations and chimneys, and railroad rails used as fireplace lintels show the use of local materials. The plain interiors reflected the purity and health guests hoped to gain at a mineral springs. The complex also includes a log barn, a smokehouse, a mineral spring and a stone tablet listing the water's contents. Summer visitors from South Georgia arrived by the Tallulah Falls Railroad and were met by mule-drawn surrey. The hotel declined after the falls were harnessed for power in 1918 and ceased hotel operation in the late 1920s, later becoming Rocky Bottom Farm. It is considered one of the last mineral springs hotels in Georgia and reopened as an inn in 1987.