Chemung Valley Reporter
April 14, 1960
THE BECKWITH HOTEL
By James L. Smith
So let’s go to Park Station.
Where the fiddlers know their stuff,
Where it’s best to heed the caller,
Lest you meet with his rebuff.
Ask any hunter of this region if he knows where Park Station is and you are almost certain to hear: “Sure, I have hunted there many times!” Ask others that question and you will probably hear: “Sure, that’s where we go huckleberrying! Ask the octogenarian the same question and you are apt to hear: “Sure, that’s where the famous Beckwith Hotel was, back in the days of the old U. I. & E,” or perhaps he might say: “Why that’s where Lew Wheeler had his mail order business seventy years ago.”
The lines, at the beginning of this story, were being sung by the gate revelers who were habitites of the Beckwith Hotel during the 1880s, when the establishment was known far and wide for its merry parties and as a sportsman’s paradise.
Soon after the Utica, Ithaca and Elmira Railroad was built during the 1870s, Henry Beckwith, at the edge of the virgin forest and beside the railroad tracks, built an imposing hotel with a spacious ballroom and other conveniently arranged accommodations and luxurious furnishings, where he catered to the elite from a wide territory.
Lewis N. Wheeler, the station agent, an enterprising young fellow, became a promoter of various programs adding much to the publicity of the out-of-the-way place. He made arrangements with the management of the railroad to to run excursion trains to Sylvan Beach at the nominal fare of $.25 for the round trip, that soon became so popular that it was necessary to add the second train. Wheeler was the manager or general agent of this enterprise.
Also in season Wheeler promoted special trains to carry the berry pickers to Park Station where, in the immediate vicinity, after the timber had been removed, blackberries grew rampantly, producing immense crops for many years. He also promoted, once each year, the Hop Picker’s Excursion to Sylvan Beach, when the growing of hops was an important industry along the line.
Gay dances and other parties were being held at the Beckwith Hotel, which soon gave way to meetings that were kept secret to only a selected few. Those meetings were Cock Fights, when special trains were run from Elmira at the south, and from Cortland at the north, bringing the sportsmen from northern Pennsylvania and southern New York to the rendezvous where the game birds were pitted against each other.
Legend has it that, one evening a party, having lost heavily in the betting, went outside and set fire to the barn in which the cock fights were held, burning it quickly to the ground. The investigation that followed put a stop to the cock fights.
Young Wheeler who, it was said, had nothing to do with the cock fights, a at about the same established a mail order business - “The Elmira Supply and Printing Company” at Park Station and also with offices on East Water Street in Elmira, and carried on a flourishing business.
Today, the railroad is no more, but a section of the old hotel, now a mere shambles, is still standing among the immense Douglas firs, that had been recently planted when the picture was taken.
