HOTEL CONFIDENTIAL
Omni Bedford Springs Resort Written by Bridget Williams Water can be curative or catastrophic. For the Omni Bedford Springs Resort, water is both its raison d'être and a force that almost wiped it off the map nearly 200 years later. In 1796 Dr. John Anderson “discovered” mineral springs tucked in the Allegheny Mountains of south-central Pennsylvania, an area long revered as sacred healing grounds for the Iroquois and Shawnee tribes. Word quickly spread about the “healing waters,” and soon, people from all over the country converged upon Bedford seeking a cure for what ailed them. In an effort to accommodate the masses, Dr. Anderson devised plans for an ambitious hotel and purchased a large tract of land whose sole structure was a grist mill. His initial hotel, opened in 1806, continued to be enlarged over the years until the Georgian-style building stretched nearly a quarter mile from end-to-end. The expansion of the railroad made the area easily accessible for residents of DC, Philadelphia and New York, who sought solace in the pristine outdoors from increasingly polluted city life. 50 slmag.net
The resort’s golf course, first laid out by Spencer Oldham in 1895, is one of the oldest courses in the United States. Now known as the Bedford Springs Old Course, the most recent refurbishment saw the restoration of the natural spring bed with native grasses and other natural materials indigenous to the food plain, as well as water features apparent at nearly every hole. Eleven U.S. presidents have visited the resort: Tomas Jeferson, Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, James Polk, James Buchanan, James Garfield, William Howard Taft, Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. Buchanan received the frst transatlantic cable sent from England to the U.S. at the hotel in August of 1958. His summer in residence at the resort prompted it to be referred to as the “Summer White House.” Despite being designated a National Historic Landmark in 1984, the hotel closed its doors in 1986, was nearly destroyed by a fash food in 1988, and fell into great disrepair before being purchased a decade later. Following an extensive $120 million renovation and restoration, the property reopened to overnight guests in 2007.
