Seneca Pines Lodge: Seneca Rocks, WV
About two winding miles down the highway from Seneca Pines Lodge is another, much larger motel. This one, literally in the shadow of Seneca Rocks, the area’s main tourist attraction, is long-abandoned. It’s a sad sight: cracked satellite dishes overgrown with moss; peeling, fading paint; an empty, rundown dining room. A long-faded sign outside advertises “Ride a horse ’to the top’ of Seneca Rocks.”
Despite the prime location, it’s the sort of abandoned place that kind of makes sense. It looks sticky in time, not upgradable, definitionally old. Someone a couple of decades ago, give or take, made the calculation that it’s not worth it anymore and left the motel complex to rot on the side of the highway. Another building in a beautiful place in rural West Virginia not worth the demo. There are lots.
Seneca Pines Lodge, nee Fort Pleasant Motel, might have been the same story.
Seneca Pines is a motel made to look like an old wooden fort. Looming over that fort happens to be a glowing orange 76 gas station orb, which is an interesting feature to ponder. It’s a small space: five rooms, roughly the size of one-and-a-half trailers laid end-to-end. At one end of the motel is an antique Coke machine that seemed to flicker to life one evening only to be dark on second glance.
A new plastic banner with the name of the motel covers an old sign next to the highway. This is the main clue that something here is alive (beyond a few lights at night, including the orb). Nearby is a flat stone slab carved with the name of Seneca Pines’ previous tenant. A couple of picnic tables sit on a patch of lawn in between the gravel parking lot and the building. A fire pit or grill would be a really nice addition here.
The exterior of Seneca Pines Lodge in no way suggests its interior. The motel was rehabbed extensively in 2023. It’s not luxury, but it’s nice. There’s nice art on the walls; better than your typical mid-range hotel. The blankets are nice. The beds are some kind of nice memory-foam. There’s big flatscreen internet TVs and small kitchenettes with a microwaves and mini-fridges. The bathrooms are spotless. Wifi is fast enough to spend a few weekdays working from the road.
There’s no front desk here, no way to walk-in. Bookings are online and there’s a door code instead of a key. Communication is via text message, though there’s no cell service at or near SPL. The valley is part of the National Radio Quiet Zone.
That valley, mostly located with the Monongahela National Forest, is one of the best places you can be on the East Coast of the United States. From the scrubby heath and bogs of the Dolly Sods wilderness to the looming quartzite blades of Seneca Rocks to the also looming radio telescopes of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, there isn’t too much like it.
The main downside of the ex-Fort Pleasant Motel is noise. The walls are thin and you’ll hear your neighbors. You might also hear the pack of dogs that live outdoors next door. Or the teen doing laps on an ATV across the highway. Or the highway.
Finally, is it haunted? Well, on a recent stay there was a colorful rope tied into a noose hanging from a coat hook. That was interesting. One of those things that’s best handled by just not thinking about it too much, probably.
-- michael byrne
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