Traveler’s Rest Hotel

The Traveler’s Rest was a wood-framed hotel built about 1909 by Jacinto V. Pereira, who was also the President of Fidelity Nationial Bank on Valley Street.

Jacinto V. Pereira ~ Bank President

The leading hotel in Scottsville for 67 years, the Traveler’s Rest contained nineteen hotel rooms with two bathrooms on each floor. The dining room sat approximately sixty people at tables covered by white tablecloths and provided ‘family style’ service. Its kitchen produced great home-cooked meals and was a favorite with locals and travelers’ alike. The dining room even served school children at lunchtime when there was no cafeteria at Scottsville School. The kitchen staff also packed box lunches for passenger trains stopping at Scottsville Depot.

A circa 1920 newspaper article delightfully described the hotel’s weekend dining room activity as follows: “I spent a Sunday at Scottsville’s leading hotel. There the townspeople came to dine after the morning church service. Elderly ladies, with delicate complexions and blue eyes, gowned in organdy and voile, were among the guests. Though they were reaching the age of silvering hair and lace fans, they addressed each other by first names. Men wearing white vests and winged collards did the same. That was evidence of friendships tracing back to earliest remembered days.”

The top three floors contained the hotel area and was accessed by an enclosed stairway on the west end of the building. The building’s lower floor contained a hardware store, which was initially operated by Nathan and Wirt Sclater, and later by George Omohundro.

According to Irene Dorrier whose father worked in the hardware store, the Traveler’s Rest “had not a ninety degree angle inside the building which created wonderful corners and backrooms.”

In the days of horses and buggies, traveling salesmen could rent their transportation at the livery next door at the corner of Main and Valley Streets. Later a filling station replaced the livery as travelers and salesmen alike traveled by automobiles.

Between 1950-1962, Virginia Lumpkin operated the hotel, and later the hotel was converted to apartments.

A disastrous fire consumed this hotel on 26 February 1976, burning it to the ground along with its adjoining filling station; see below photo of the fire rubble of the Turner’s Exxon gas station (left) and Traveler’s Rest Hotel (right):

The top photo is part of the Virginia Lumpkin collection, a lifelong resident of Scottsville, Virginia.

The photo of the February 1976 fire rubble of Traveler’s Rest Hotel and Turner’s Exxon gas station is part of the Albert and David Wood collection.

The early photos from 1910-1915 are part of the Robert L. Goldstone collection; they were included in Robert’s Master of Arts thesis at the University of Virginia which was entitled Historical Geography of Scottsville, Virginia (August 1953).

Copyright © 2018 by Scottsville Museum

Top Image Located On: Capturing Our Heritage, CDVL01
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Second Image Located On: Capturing Our Heritage, CD ADW01
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