Mentone

Alabama

In the late 19th century, guests arriving at the Mentone Springs Hotel would be presented with a brass token, redeemable for a single glass of water drawn from a specific limestone cave on the property. The water, rich with minerals from the Lookout Mountain sandstone, was the town’s original raison d’être, promoted as a curative for ailments from dyspepsia to “female diseases.” This belief in the land’s inherent restorative power, first commercialized over a century ago, continues to define the human relationship with this particular patch of the southern Appalachians.

Mentone occupies a narrow, irregular plateau on the western brow of Lookout Mountain, a long, forested ridge that forms the southernmost reach of the Cumberland Plateau. The town itself is strung along a winding ridgetop road in DeKalb County, Alabama, at an elevation of approximately 1,700 feet. The air is perceptibly cooler than in the valleys below, a fact that would become its primary economic asset. The underlying geology is Pennsylvania-age sandstone, a hard, resistant caprock that creates the mountain’s distinctive flat top and sheer cliffs. Below this cap, layers of shale and limestone erode more easily, creating sheltered coves and springs where water, having filtered slowly through the porous sandstone above, emerges. One such spring, at the base of a cliff face in what is now DeSoto State Park, became the nucleus of the settlement. The land proposed a reliable, mineral-laden water source and a high, cool retreat; the human response was a health resort.

Before the brass tokens and the hotel, the Cherokee knew this area as Uk'tena Asgaya, “the place of the Uktena,” a powerful, horned serpent of their cosmology. The specific cliffs and springs were considered sacred, places where the boundary between the physical and spiritual worlds was thin. The surrounding forests of chestnut, oak, and hickory on the mountain provided hunting grounds, while the more fertile valleys below were sites for seasonal agriculture. The Cherokee presence was ended not by battle here, but by forced removal. In 1838, a detachment of over 1,100 Cherokee passed near this area on the Trail of Tears, their route taking them across Lookout Mountain and toward the internment camps further west. For a time, the mountain returned to silence, its human narrative paused.

The modern story of Mentone begins with a patent. In 1884, John Mason, a former Confederate officer, patented 160 acres encompassing the mineral spring. Recognizing the burgeoning “water cure” craze of the Gilded Age, he and a partner founded the Mentone Springs Company. They named the place Mentone, after the resort town of Menton on the French Riviera, an aspirational comparison that framed the mountain as an alpine sanctuary. The Mentone Springs Hotel, a sprawling three-story frame structure with wide verandas, opened in 1884. It was soon joined by cottages and a sanitarium. Guests, primarily from the sweltering lowlands of Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi, arrived by train to the valley town of Fort Payne, then ascended the steep, winding wagon road up the mountain for the season. The economy was hospitality, entirely dependent on the perceived virtues of the climate and the water.

This single-industry focus shifted with the arrival of the artist. In the 1920s and 1930s, the clear light, dramatic landscapes, and cool summers began attracting painters, writers, and musicians. Among them was Mae Carden, a teacher who would later develop the Carden Method of education, who ran a summer school for girls in Mentone. The Brow Hotel, built in 1927 to replace an earlier structure lost to fire, became a cultural hub. The land’s proposal was no longer just medicinal, but aesthetic and intellectual. This era cemented Mentone’s dual identity: a retreat for both bodily and creative rejuvenation. The community that formed was seasonal and eclectic, comprising wealthy families from the Black Belt, itinerant artists, and local families who provided services.

The natural environment that drew these visitors was, and remains, a mosaic of mountain and cove. The sandstone outcrops create habitats for plants like the Canadian hemlock and Carolina rhododendron, species typically found further north, which survive here in the cool, moist microclimates of the shaded gorges. In the 1930s, the Civilian Conservation Corps, as part of the New Deal, constructed the infrastructure for what would become DeSoto State Park. The CCC built rustic stone lodges, trails, and a lodge using local timber and stone, formalizing public access to the waterfalls, canyons, and forests that had always been the backdrop to the resort life. Their work translated the wild beauty of the land into a recreational asset, a process that continues to underpin the modern economy.

After World War II, the era of the grand seasonal hotel waned. The Mentone Springs Hotel, after decades of decline, burned in 1954. The Brow Hotel closed as a hotel in the 1970s, though it survives as a private residence. The economy gradually transitioned from serving long-term summer guests to catering to weekend tourists, day hikers, and a growing population of retirees and artisans seeking a permanent home in the mountains. The old hotel cottages were converted into year-round homes or eclectic shops. The water from the spring, once bottled and sold, still flows, but now it is a historical curiosity rather than a commercial product.

Today, Mentone’s population fluctuates but remains small, under 500 permanent residents. Its commercial strip is a line of colorful, often handmade structures housing antique stores, pottery studios, and cafes. The land still dictates the rhythm. The steep, narrow ridge limits expansion, preserving the village scale. The crisp fall foliage and cool summer breezes drive a seasonal tourism cycle focused on festivals, weddings, and outdoor recreation. Agriculture is limited by the thin, rocky soil, but small-scale farming persists in the valleys, and apple orchards dot the mountain’s lower slopes. The most significant modern change is demographic: the town is now a destination for those seeking an alternative to urban life, drawn by the same environmental factors that attracted health seekers 140 years ago—elevation, forest, and a slower pace.

The conversation between this land and its people has been remarkably consistent in theme, if not in form. From the Cherokee’s sacred Uk'tena place, to the medicinal spring of the resort, to the artist’s inspiring vista, to the tourist’s hiking trail, humans have consistently interpreted this high plateau as a place of renewal. The infrastructure has changed from sanitariums to state park cabins, from wagon roads to scenic highways, but the fundamental attraction remains the specific qualities of the air, the water, and the stone. At the site of the original Mentone Springs Hotel, now a grassy field, a single surviving stone chimney stands. A few hundred yards away, the cave spring still seeps from the limestone, its water no longer collected in brass-token portions but flowing freely down the rocks, continuing its slow, patient work of shaping the cove.