Rensselaer Union, Volume 11, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 August 1879 — A Big Hotel in a Cornfield. [ARTICLE]

A Big Hotel in a Cornfield.

One of the effects of the panic of 1873 was to defeat certain railroad projects in Virginia and suddenly check the growth in its. infancy of a grandly-lajd-out city near Quantico, in Prince William County, in that State, about thirty miles -down the Potomac. Anson Bangs and Jesse Hoyt, two well-known New York capitalists, the former the advocate of cheap transit rail and steamer routes, with others, about ten years ago, conceived the idea of a railroad from some point on the Potomac to the Kanawha River. They procured a charter for such,- a road, and after having examined many locations finally selected the neighborhood of Quantico as the best site for the terminus on the Potomac. Accordingly they purchased there a tract of land—about seven thousand acres—extending from Quantico Creek to Chapa wamsic Creek, on the Potomac River, running back a distance of about four', miles to the Telegraph Road. This triact they laid out in streets, avenues and squares, ana named, it Potomac City. Mr. Bangs was so confident of the success of the enterprise/ that he iinmediately had erected near the intersection of Potomac avenue and the failroad a large

hotel. This is a concrete building of four stories, containing one hundred and twenty-two rooms, and cost $68,000. It is well arranged and finely finished. This building, now occu'pied only by some one to care for it, has long been a wonder to those who have caught sight of it from passing cars or steamers. Thp enclosure surrounding it having once or twice bfeen cultivated in corn gave it a still more singular appearance—a x hotel in a cornfield.— . Washington Star. ;