HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (TENNESSEE VALLEY LIVING) - In the late 1800s, people from around the region would travel to Huntsville to visit its health resort, the Monte Sano Hotel.
They would travel to enjoy the “fresh mountain air.” The hotel was equipped with running water piped in from the spring in downtown Huntsville. Hotel owners even went as far as to get local doctors to write about the health benefits a visit to Monte Sano had. Saying it could even cure illness.
Since there weren’t any nice paved roads up the mountain, the hotel’s proprietors had a railway line built from downtown to the hotel that you could ride for 25 cents round trip. The route included steep inclines and rickety-looking bridges, and after an incident where the brakes failed, it fell out of favor and shut down.
The hotel had money issues, and it was open on and off until 1901. All that’s left of the hotel now is one of its chimneys, and some remains of one of the bathing areas and parts of the pipes, which can be seen from some of the Land Trust trails on the mountain.
To learn more about the rise and fall of the hotel, listen to the “Soup, Trains, and the Hotel Monte Sano” episode of Lily Flagg’s Signal.
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