Lake Drummond Hotel on the Dismal Canal: State Line Between Virginia and North Carolina

The Lake Drummond Hotel (also called the Halfway House) is on the state line between Virginia and North Carolina, along the Dismal Canal. The Halfway House presented an excellent option for illegal dueling, gambling, or a lover’s tryst. A criminal needed only to cross the building’s central state line to be in the other state.

Isaiah Rogerson, the first owner and proprietor, built the Lake Drummond Hotel in 1829 and opened it on August 21, 1830. The hotel was 128 feet long, built on stilts along the Dismal Canal, and featured eight suites. Visitors could rent boats to travel the Feeder Ditch to Lake Drummond. After he died within a month of the hotel’s opening, other figures capitalized on the hotel’s unique location. 

An ad posted by Amalek C. Williams in the August 27, 1832, “Norfolk & Portsmouth Herald,” states that the hotel’s specialty is hosting wedding parties. It had reasonable and good accommodations. It turns out Amalek C. Williams was a minister and business partner of the hotel’s long-term proprietor, William G. Lamb. Lamb was his brother-in-law. Together, they built the hotel’s reputation as a “Gretna Green” hotel for eloping couples and a duelist’s haven for duelists. “Gretna Green” is a historic venue, almost 300 years old, in or near the Scottish border village of Gretna Green. In 1754, the Scottish hotel opened to evade the stricter British marriage laws.

The “Mariners’ Museum and Park Catalog” states that Robert Salmon painted “Dismal Swamp Canal with Lake Drummond Hotel” in 1830. His artist’s account book then notes he lent the painting to William Pendleton for a lithograph. Pendelton entitled it “Lake Drummond Hotel, The Gretna Green of Lower Virginia, and part of the Dismal Swamp Canal.” It appears the Gretna Green tradition crossed the Atlantic!