page_title: Clemuel Ricketts Mansion
section_title: Hotel
hierarchical_section_title: Clemuel Ricketts Mansion / History / Hotel
caption_attribution_description: Rear facade of Stone House, the Clemuel Ricketts Mansion — located on Ganoga Lake near Lopez in Colley Township, Sullivan County, Pennsylvania, United States. Built in 1852, the Georgian mansion was added to the National Register of Historic Places on 9 June 1983.
context_page_description: The Clemuel Ricketts Mansion is a Georgian-style house made of sandstone, built in 1852 or 1855 on the shore of Ganoga Lake in Colley Township, Sullivan County, Pennsylvania in the United States. It was home to several generations of the Ricketts family, including R. Bruce Ricketts and William Reynolds Ricketts. Originally built as a hunting lodge, it was also a tavern and post office, and served as part of a hotel for much of the 19th century.
  After 1903 the house served as the Ricketts family's summer home; they kept it even as they sold over 65,000 acres to the state of Pennsylvania from 1920 to 1950. The house was included in the Historic American Buildings Survey in 1936 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983. A group of investors bought the lake, surrounding land, and house in 1957 and developed them privately for housing and recreation. The house became the Ganoga Lake Association's clubhouse, and is not open to the public.
  The original mansion is an L-shaped structure, two-and-a-half stories high, with stone walls 2 feet thick. It was built in a clearing surrounded by old-growth forest with a view to the lake 900 feet to the east.
context_section_description: The Ark and stone house together formed the North Mountain House hotel, which opened in 1873, and was managed by Ricketts' brother Frank until 1898. Many of the guests, who came from Wilkes-Barre, Philadelphia, New York City, and other places, were Ricketts' friends and relations. The hotel was open year-round; in summer, guests frequently arrived after school let out in June and stayed until school resumed in September. In 1876 and 1877, Ricketts ran the first summer school in the United States at his house and hotel; one of the teachers was Joseph Rothrock, later known as the "Father of Forestry" in Pennsylvania.
  By 1874 Ricketts had renamed Long Pond as Highland Lake, and by 1875 had named the highest waterfall on Kitchen Creek as Ganoga Falls. That year the North Mountain House hotel was featured in John B. Bachelder's travel guide Popular resorts, and how to reach them, which praised its location in a virgin forest, the lake and nearby waterfalls, and opportunities for hunting, fishing, and hiking. In 1881, Ricketts renamed Highland Lake as Ganoga Lake. Pennsylvania senator Charles R. Buckalew suggested the name Ganoga, an Iroquoian word which he said meant "water on the mountain" in the Seneca language.
  The house and hotel were on the east side of the old turnpike; a 100-acre (40 ha) field on the other side of the road had a small herd of milk cows and a vegetable garden to provide for the guests' needs. The field also had a rifle range and a nine-hole golf course. Guests could enjoy tennis and croquet, and a lawn stretched from the house east to the lake, which offered boating and bathing. There was an outlook point 0.5 miles (0.8 km) southwest of the house, and Ricketts built a 40-foot (12 m) observation tower at the highest point on North Mountain, 3.5 miles (5.6 km) south. After the first tower collapsed, he built a 100-foot (30 m) replacement, and named the site Grand View.
  Ricketts was a lumberman who made his fortune clearcutting nearly all his land, but no logging was allowed within 0.5-mile (0.8 km) of the lake, and the glens and their waterfalls in the state park were "saved from the lumberman's axe through the foresight of the Ricketts family". One hemlock tree cut near the lake to clear land for a building in 1893 was 6 feet (1.8 m) in diameter and 532 years old. The North Mountain House hotel was threatened by a forest fire in 1900; the subsequent loss of much of the surrounding old-growth forest led to decreased numbers of hotel guests. Changing tastes may have also played a role in the decline in popularity; the hotel had over 150 guests in August 1878, but only about 70 guests in August 1894.
  In 1903 another large fire on North Mountain threatened the sawmill in the lumber town of Ricketts northeast of the lake. Beginning in 1893, a 3.85-mile (6.20 km) branch line of the Lehigh Valley Railroad ran from Ricketts to a log station at the north end of the lake; a boardwalk and coach service brought guests from the station to the hotel. There was daily passenger service to Wilkes-Barre and Towanda, and the line also served freight trains hauling ice from the lake for use in refrigeration from 1895.
  The North Mountain House was long known for its rustic charms; it was heated with open fireplaces, decorated with animal skins and hatracks made of antlers, and had two live black bears on chains in the field across the road from the house. In 1895 and 1900 the stone house was refurbished, and telephone service, acetylene lighting, and steam heat were added. In 1900 The Sullivan Review newspaper recalled its former state and wrote of the changes: "We hardly call that an improvement. ... When the North Mountain House is lighted by gas, heated by a modern furnace, etc., its great charm is gone."
caption: The rear of the house with the two-story porch on the inside of the L; the wing added in 1913 is at far right.
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