The Guest House
Two weeks back I visiting Frankfort Mineral Springs in Raccoon Creek State Park. The town of Frankfort Springs used to be a sprawling healing and vacation spa for the upper class of Pittsburgh back in the 1800’s. In the early 1900’s a fire swept through the resort destroying everything. The owners could not rebuild at the time due to the depression. In the 1960’s the area off of route 18 was purchased by the State of Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania DCNR (Dept of Conservation and Natural Resources) purchased the property for the creation of Raccoon Creek State Park. At the time, the environmental educator for the park rehabbed the last standing building on the property. It was the guest cottage. Once a two-story building, it has been reduced to one. DCNR began restoring the structure to house a museum. Unfortunately, due to the remoteness of the site and no way to monitor, vandals stole all of the remaining artifacts. Today the structure is a broken shell. Graffiti is scrawled on the wooden beams and roof. Teenagers proclaiming whatever it is teenagers proclaim, oh and my favorite scribble…Naked people will eat your face FACT! Walls are cracking and caving in. There are no windows to keep out the cold, only an empty window frame. One could tell where the old wood burning stove would have been. With hookups for a fewer modern conveniences of the day. The guest house isn’t that big, and with two people inside it feels crowded. However, one can look around and get a sense of what a great place this was to come and relax. Maybe heal what ails you. The peacefulness of being out in nature. I stood there imagining what it was like to come in after a long day of hiking and enjoying the springs below. Nice warm fire, hot on-site locally grown food waiting for you at the table to enjoy. Places like this really don’t exist anymore.
Really quite the shame this has happened. It has interesting timber construction. I have always wondered about how abandoned places came to be.
It is a shame. All because of the remoteness the place can’t be monitored.
Too bad this has fallen into such condition, and with those teens about… well, doesn’t sound promising.
Glad you created these nice images of the place.
Thanks Jimi. It is a shame. To see all of those artifacts would have been really cool. To bad it’s so remote. Just no way to protect against stuff like this. Sad though.
Well, it does look a bit bigger than you describe and has great potential, in my view! It could be turned into a walker/hiker hut, like we have here in the Alps and high country, used during summer and the snow times. No locks but the honesty system, when replacing wood used for fires and so on. It does work if people are given a chance! Good photos!
Hi Janina, It would be a cool walker/hiker hut. I don’t know if the DCNR had plans for this or not. It’s been in this condition for quite sometime. I’d like to see the building re-purposed again. It would definitely have room to house at least 3-4 hikers, like the ones on the AT. Thanks for stopping by and commenting!