Roaring Gap Club took its first breath from off a horse’s back during 29-year-old Hugh Gwyn Chatham’s ride through the mountains to buy wool for his father’s Elkin mill. Thomas Gwyn and William Harris bought the land from Bob and Alice Smith, who “lived out their years” on the property named “Laurel Glen,” after a nearby creek. Tom Bryan, a very helpful club resident, connected things from that point.

In 1894, Gwyn and Harris deeded the land to Roaring Gap Summer Resort Company, formed by Chatham and several other area residents. They were also the first to buy homesite lots, followed by Chatham Manufacturing Company and eight area men. One was “Uncle Billy” Vogler, a Winston-Salem jeweler, who turned the business over to his son and moved to the area, supervising the construction of the Roaring Gap Hotel. The hotel, which cost $10,000 to build, opened in 1894, and the Voglers were among its first guests. Hugh Chatham built a new house in the area for $500, but hearing that its contractor “hadn’t made any money on his work,” gave the man another $100.

By 1899, rooms in the three-story Roaring Gap Hotel were advertised as “well furnished and equipped with fireplaces, using wood for fuel” and had “broad commodious piazzas and balconies. The ideal summer home for tourists, (it) has established a name that is known from ocean to ocean…equalled by few and excelled by none.”

A bowling alley, tennis courts and local trout fishing added to the appeal of cool summer days and nights. Getting there from off the mountain posed the only problem. Elkin was four hours distant; Winston-Salem, two days, with an overnight stay along the way. The Elkin-Alleghany Railroad’s narrow-gauge system connected Elkin to the small community of Doughton, just below the mountain. Plans to extend its rails up the mountain failed and the company closed down. On a winter night in 1913, fire claimed the hotel and Alex Chatham’s nearby house, despite the fact that the hotel had no electrical wiring. Lights seen inside the buildings and footprints through the snow suggested arson, but it was never proven. The hotel’s loss was compensated by a $3500 insurance settlement, far too little for rebuilding the facility.

In 1924, Rufus Doughton, a powerful and influential state legislator, opened the area’s access door by ushering through U.S. 21’s paving all the way to Sparta.

Later, Rufus Tufts, Pinehurst’s developer, was hired to design a golf course, new hotel and lake. Stockholders drew building-lot numbers for home construction, at the rate of one number per stock share owned. Rock quarried from below U.S. 21’s overlook became the new Graystone Inn’s outside walls. However, the developer’s role was much less secure, through a misunderstanding as to the stockholders’ purpose.

“We never realized that there was never any intention to make a profit,” Tufts said, as he resigned his responsibilities.

Worship services began in the new chapel during the summer of 1927. Episcopal prayerbooks and hymnals were in every pew, put there by the building’s planner and construction supervisor, an Episcopalian. The chapel now offers Roaring Gap’s residents nondenominational services led by a few area pastors who serve during the summer months. In the 1960s, Mary Brevard, a North Carolina resident and director of a very successful Florida hotel, was hired as a summertime manager for the Graystone. She brought her entire staff — desk clerks, housekeepers, cooks, waiters and all — to help, shuttling back and forth by seasons.

The resort offered members and guests golf, weekend cookouts, picnics, card games, dances and assorted other outdoor activities, making them “like one big, happy family.” Unfortunately, since property owners had never paid any dues or fees, the “family’s” cash was dwindling fast. Lacking other options, the community was reorganized as a club, complete with the usual financial encumbrances. The cash crunch soon dwindled, leaving it “…in the best shape it has even been in, with new blood, new members, and a solid foundation to build on for the next generation.”

A quaint yellow home stands opposite the club house, moved there from across the road. Chatham was about to take a lengthy fishing trip in Canada, so he built the “doll house” for his daughter to enjoy while he was gone. In contrast, the elegant Graystone Inn is so perfectly placed as to suggest its having grown right there. Additional dining space and white-framed patios create a comfortably cozy environment for relaxed conversation. Several guestrooms have been remodeled as condominiums.

W.W. Wood wrote a letter summarizing the club’s appeal: “Writers, orators and artists with pen, tongue and brush may come and drink from this expansive store of the beautiful and grand, and be filled to the utmost, but none will be able to tell the story, complete, to others.”