Deer Park Hotel
During the boom years, East Coast railroads were finding that a lucrative passenger business could be built up by transporting people from a city to railroad-owned hotels in the mountains, including nearby in Oakland, Maryland. Thus, B&O Railroad ventured into the “resort hotel” business in 1869, when they purchased several 100 acres (400,000 m) of the Perry family's “Anchorage Farm.” In 1872, the railroad built the center section of the Deer Park Hotel; and it opened for the first time on July 4, 1873. The east and west wings of the hotel were added in 1881-82 bringing the total number of rooms to 300. (According to tradition, “The Anchorage” house stood beside the present Pysell Crosscut Road; the location is marked by two sailing ship anchors on the lawn of a house that is there now.)
During the early 1870s, H. G. Davis contracted to build a series of cottages on the hotel property, with the first one becoming John W. Garrett’s cottage. Later, this became the caretaker's cottage, and Garrett had a more sumptuous summer home built to the west side of the hotel; he died there in the summer of 1884.
The Deer Park Hotel was one of Five Combination Station-Hotels built by the B&O during the 1870s, including the Queen City Hotel in Cumberland, Maryland.
References
- Albert L. Feldstein, Garrett County, Arcadia Publishing, ISBN 0738542660, 2006