Pine Lodge Club House

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the Pine Lodge Club House. Now, every good story needs a beginning, and this one starts with water. Mineral water, to be specific.

Back in the 1880s, a group of business leaders had themselves a fine habit of gathering at the Mineral Wells Hotel, out at a spa in Elkhart, a nearby resort. You can picture it, can't you. Men of means, taking the waters, doing what business leaders do when they're relaxed and feeling prosperous.

They liked each other's company. That part mattered more than they probably realized at the time. Then the wells failed.

Just like that, the whole reason they'd been gathering in Elkhart, gone. Now, a lesser group of men might've scattered to the winds. But not this bunch.

They looked at each other, shrugged off the loss of those mineral springs, and decided the fellowship was worth keeping. So they moved. They organized a lodge.

And in 1907, they built themselves something to show they meant business about leisure: the Pine Lodge Club House. Wide fireplace. Large rooms.

Long verandas. The kind of place built for long evenings and longer conversations. The wells that brought them together had dried up and disappeared, but the men themselves, they just put down deeper roots.

What the marker says

Built by business leaders who in 1880s patronized Mineral Wells Hotel at spa in Elkhart, a nearby resort. After wells failed, group moved here, organized lodge, built (1907) this club house with wide fireplace, large rooms, long verandas. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1967