© Jerry F. Couch

WORK ON THE ARTICLE you are about to read began on October 7, 2017. That was the day I interviewed the late Bill Kiser and Charles Kiser, Jr. My goal was to capture their memories of what it was like to live and grow up in the Winchester Hotel in Old Castlewood.

Before we proceed further, we would like to remind our readers that the Winchester Hotel is PRIVATE PROPERTY. Please respect the rights of its owner and do not trespass

The interview took place at the St. Paul Virginia Railroad Museum. Charles Kiser’s daughter Mikki Fugate brought her father and uncle there and stayed for the interview. We all had lunch together as well. Afterwards, as the Kiser’s narrative of community life in Old Castlewood unfolded, I felt as if I was THERE. The room seemed to grow brighter as they spoke of good neighbors, friends, and customers – most of whom had long since departed this realm. They recalled the excitement of the simpler Christmases of years gone by, when their father’s store on the ground floor level of the hotel would be stocked with candy and gift items. These items were carefully chosen by Mr. Kiser as appropriate to the season, but to be appropriate to his younger customer’s age and pocketbooks as well.

Bill and Charles shared memories of the children they watched grow up and how they’d come in the store to eye the candy, carefully considering how to spend their nickels to greatest advantage. Bill added, “We never got all the candy we wanted just because our dad had a store!” Oh, the temptations of Tantalus!

The Kisers told us of the hustle and bustle of “Wool Day” at the Castlewood Depot. Farmers would bring wagons loaded with sacks of wool to be sold to purchasing agents employed by woolen mills located in various places.

In addition to “Wool Day,” there was also “Turkey Day.” Poultry processors would send agents to Castlewood to purchase live turkeys. These turkeys would have been raised by local farmers especially for the purpose of gracing the Thanksgiving tables of customers in other parts of the state. It should be noted that unlike the frozen birds we buy today, those Castlewood birds were free-range. They were not nearly so juicy or plump as today’s commercial poultry.

My intention was to transcribe the Kiser’s interview for our readers in its entirety. I had brought along my small tape recorder for that purpose. Unfortunately, the recorder was set to “high quality,” which eats up tape rapidly. Therefore, out of an interview lasting well over an hour, I captured only the first 15 minutes or so. When I played back the tape you can imagine my disappointment – as well as my explosive one-word expletive! And now that tape has deteriorated due to age and is unusable. Oh, well…

In 2024, the Winchester Hotel in Old Castlewood is a ruined shell following the collapse of its upper floors years ago. But in its heyday the hotel was a good place for traveling salesmen and other area visitors to obtain meals and lodging.

Construction of the Winchester Hotel was completed in 1921. Its original owners were Robert Walter Dickenson and Edward G. Harding. The hotel was convenient to the Castlewood N & W Depot as well as the road leading to Dante via Red Oak Ridge, and from St. Paul through Bickley Mills and Temple Hill to Dickensonville. The hotel featured a total of 27 rooms, 18 of which were rented to guests. Each guest room was outfitted with a wash basin and running water. Guests, along with the hotel’s employees (and later, its resident owners) shared bathrooms on each of the three upper floors, accessible from the hallways. This arrangement was not unusual at that time.

Though I have been unable to determine the daily rates paid by guests in the hotel’s early days, the very similar Fairmont Hotel in St. Paul charged $1.50 per night for accommodations. And the Blue Sulphur Hotel charged $2.00 to $2.50 per night, depending upon the customer’s requirements. In addition to transient guests, single men and women (teachers at the Temple Hill School, for example) boarded at the hotel and paid a monthly rate.

Pictured below is the long-gone N & W Depot at Old Castlewood as it appeared around 1920. The people in the photo are unidentified.

The Winchester Hotel’s large dining room was outfitted with a long table. This table remained in the hotel for years. It along with other miscellaneous furnishing may have been original to the hotel. Guests and boarders would have dined “family style” at the big table. The hotel’s fare, cooked on a coal-burning stove in its large kitchen, must have been good because the hotel was the scene of private parties such as the one described below. The names of those who attended that party will be very familiar to many of our readers.

For many years, the Winchester Hotel was the center of a thriving community. This is borne out by the 1921 sketch of Old Castlewood seen below. The sketch was an exhibit in a court case involving a dispute between owners of Castlewood Motor Company and the Winchester Hotel. It was the subject of an article I wrote several years ago for the printed edition of the Clinch Valley Times. Some of you may remember reading that article.

In the wake of WWI, there was an economic recession due to decreased post-war production. It was followed by another recession that lasted from January of 1920 until July of 1921. But after it was over, prosperity returned and with it came a general feeling of optimism for the future. The Winchester Hotel and other new businesses in Old Castlewood were born of that optimism.

The article below is from the September 2, 1923 edition of the Johnson City Chronicle. From it we can get an idea of how the national optimism was impacting Old Castlewood. For example, electricity was coming and how exciting that must have been for residents who had depended upon gas and kerosene for lighting. Also, new houses were being built in the community, many of which still stand today. The Winchester Hotel is mentioned too, and reference is made to the traveling salesmen who frequently occupied its rooms while selling and taking orders for merchandise.

In the wonderful 1936 photo below, we see an N & W passenger train that has stopped at the Castlewood Depot The time of day and perhaps the train number as well can be determined by comparing the shadows in the photo to the old N & W passenger timetables on display at the St. Paul Virginia Railroad Museum. I’ll check that info and save it for another day 🙂

The Winchester Hotel is pictured at left in the photo above. Take note of the skylights in the building’s roof. These skylights admitted natural light to some of the rooms on the hotel’s top floor as well as the stairwell of the building. The panels of the skylight could be opened to create a natural draft that helped cool the building in hot, muggy weather. Those of you have lived in close proximity to the Clinch River know what I’m talking about, and why this would have been important in those days before air-conditioning.

Although there were a few small ventilators along the hotel’s exterior wall facing the depot, there were no windows. Except for rooms on the top floor, the hotel’s interior doors had functional transoms to admit light and air. Rooms without exterior windows had small interior windows that opened onto the hallways.

Take note of the old one-lane bridge in the photo. That bridge has been written about on the CVT’s pages several times, so our regular followers should be familiar with its history.

In the Clinch Valley Times “Remember the Good Old Days” photo below, we see young Charles Kiser who purchased the hotel in the 1930’s. Mr. Kiser and his wife, Hattie were the hotel’s long-term owners, operators, and residents.

In the photo below, we see Charles, Sr. and wife, Hattie posing happily near the hotel’s kitchen door. Below the concrete porch floor is the large coal storage room where fuel for the boiler, kitchen stove, and parlor stove was kept. While I don’t know how much coal was required to heat the hotel, I’m sure it was a lot. My family sold coal to the St. Paul Apartments in St. Paul and its boiler consumed a ton of coal per day.

The entrance to the hotel’s lobby is seen in the picture below. There was no interior stairway connecting the store with the hotel. From the beginning, the two were intended to be separate businesses.

As travel by rail began its inevitable decline, the Winchester Hotel gradually became more of a family home than a business. For Charles, Sr. and Hattie Kiser, the hotel was the gathering place for their large brood of children and grandchildren. In the photo below, we see Bill and Lorraine Kiser in the hotel dining room, cutting their wedding cake in 1952. After their marriage, Bill and Lorraine made their home in the hotel. There was plenty of room for everyone!

At left in the 1950’s photo below, we see the entrance to Charles Kiser, Sr’s. store on the ground floor level of the Winchester Hotel. The people on the store’s porch are unidentified. As with other community stores throughout the area, it was a gathering place where locals could discuss events of the day.

Below is a photo of Charles Kiser, Sr. in his store. When this photo was taken, the store no longer carried a full line of groceries, sundries, or clothing. It had become the community’s “convenience store.”

All good things must come to an end. Below is an advertisement of the auction sale of the Winchester Hotel property from the February 12, 1982 edition of the Bristol Herald-Courier.

In the photo below we can see how the hotel looked in the mid-1970’s. That’s Bill Kiser’s Chevrolet Caprice and his Chevrolet Blazer parked in front.

Now let’s talk about the hotel’s construction. Other buildings owned outright or in part by Robert Walter Dickenson had been designed by Donald Beeson, a Johnson City architect. Beeson also designed “Greystone” (originally Walnut Grove) for Emmet Duff on St. Paul Hill as well as the St. Paul Baptist Church, the St. Paul School, the St. Paul Apartments (now the Western Front Hotel), and the Dickenson-McNeer Office Building. So, it’s possible Beeson also designed the Winchester Hotel. Please note that I am only making an assumption. I have no documentary evidence of this. But if I live long enough…maybe!

The exterior walls of the hotel are made of concrete blocks. These bocks were probably produced on site using sand from the Clinch River mixed with portland cement. This mixture would have been shoveled into a block-making machine like the one pictured above from the Sears, Roebuck & Co. building supplies catalog of 1910. By using metal plates stamped to resemble either rusticated or cut stone, various fancy architectural details could be created (“Stonebriar” in St. Paul is an example of this). However, the Winchester Hotel has a very unpretentious appearance, consistent with its intended commercial purpose and clientele. Travelers who wanted fancy accommodations didn’t get off the train in Old Castlewood or St. Paul. They continued on to the upscale Hotel Norton which, coincidentally, had also been built in 1921.

Heat for the Winchester Hotel was supplied by a hand-fed coal-fired steam boiler. Pipes from the boiler were connected to cast iron radiators which kept the rooms warm. The boiler also provided domestic hot water – which meant a fire was required year-round. Shovel the coal in and haul the ashes out.

Hotels are a labor-intensive enterprise. Preparing breakfast, lunch, and dinner along with making beds, cleaning guest rooms, and dishwashing is endless. Clean sheets, towels, and bedding for guests’ rooms were stored in a large linen closet after being washed and dried. That task was performed in the hotel’s large “wash room.” Keeping the bathrooms and common areas of the hotel clean, especially in bad weather would have been a demanding task. However, labor was cheap in former days, and somehow it all came together.

In time, Old Castlewood was no longer on the “beaten path.” Highways were built with more direct routes to other places. Rail passenger service ended. The post office was relocated to “Banner’s Corner.” The country’s economy and demographics were making a steady shift from rural agriculture to urban industrialism. But…Old Castlewood lives on. And today, many people are proud to call it “home.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: Photos in this article were generously shared with the Clinch Valley Times by members of the Kiser family. Memories of Bill and Charles Kiser, Jr. will always live in my memory and I am thankful to have known them. I appreciate all the people who have helped us accurately document local history. Research of the Old Castlewood community, its businesses, and its residents will continue. So, there may be a follow up article to this one if there’s enough information to warrant writing it.

*There was also a Winchester Hotel in Coeburn, VA. It, along with Lays Hardware and several other stores, was destroyed by a disastrous fire on Front Street in 1932.

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