The Chetwynd Chronicles

Yesterday morning I met with Lee Windhorst, the gentleman who told me last Thursday that he knew where the hotel was located. His parents, Fred and Florence Windhorst, moved to the 10-acre “farm” in 1944 on Lake Ella Road where Lee now resides. I was all prepared for him tell me that my hunch as to the hotel’s location, not revealed in my post two days ago, was on Morrison’s property on the south side of Lake Ella. Yet, in the back of my mind was Alfred Bosanquet’s claim that it was on the west side of Lake Ella. But that never made sense to me (see a previous post).

Lee told me that a neighbor, Col. Charles E. Smith, a veteran of World War I who came to the area in the 1920s, told his father to go to the site of the hotel where there was a fine lawn of St. Augustine grass from which to dig up plugs for their lawn. Lee and his dad did that and plugged their yard. Then he took me to that site—a sandy rutted “trail” not too far from 441 where the Chetwynd depot was. He said he not only remembered some old wood laying around but a single gauge railroad track (but no coach!) that he believes delivered guests to the hotel. My mind was/is boggled. Here is a Google aerial map of the area:

The east side of Lake Ella is on the left. The large open field to the east of the housing development is where Lee claimed the hotel site to have been. Note the intersection of Lake Ella Road and US 441 on the far right where the Chetwynd depot was located.

Frank Cook wrote in June 1887, “They are building a large hotel near here at the new town of Chetwynd.” An 1888 seasonal advertisement for the hotel claimed, “It is situated in the highland of Florida and is surrounded by a heavy growth of large pine trees. A charming lake, spring fed, lies immediately in the rear of the home.” The area I visited wasn’t near the lake. According to a section map it’s about a half-mile from the eastern shore line. An undocumented piece picked up at the Leesburg Heritage Society but written before 1956 says, “The writer once followed a long abandoned section of the old Sand Mountain trail at the outskirts of Chetwynd and noticed a peculiar formation in the old clay. Wind had swept the surface clean and the perfect shapes of aged clay bricks could be discerned. It was necessary to guess that this had been the frontage of a store or similar public building of the frontier road.” This same source said that Chetwynd was located on what was then called Sand Mountain Road. “Mr. and Mrs. Reuben Matthews. . . remember this place when it was a town center with the Chetwynd Arms Hotel and race track a mile west.”

I’ve contacted a source who explored the hotel’s location, wherever he might have been led, in the 1980s. In the meantime I’m more bumfuzzled than ever!