Massanetta Springs Historic District

The Massanetta Springs Historic District is a retreat in Rockingham County, Virginia, administered by the Presbyterian Synod of Virginia, and chiefly associated with the Massanetta Springs Summer Bible Conference Encampment. The district includes the Hotel (1910), Hudson Auditorium (1922) and Camp Massanetta (1955–56). A Methodist camp existed at the site, originally known as Taylor's Springs, from 1816.HistoryThe first settler in the area was James Taylor, who built a house there after 1730. About 1816 Jonathan and William Taylor leased the site to the Rockingham Circuit of the Methodist Episcopal Church for use as a camp meeting ground. The annual meetings were extremely popular, and the springs were reported as having healing properties. The springs came under the ownership of Evan Henton in the late 1840s, who operated a modest spa at the site. A partnership established in the 1870s attempted to rename the property the "Ague and Healing Springs", and Dr. Burke Chrisman built a house there in 1885 and a hotel that may have survived until 1994. By 1893 the area was becoming known as Massanetta Springs, a portmanteau of the common local place name Massanutten and Chrisman's wife's name, Henrietta. Chrisman marketed water from the springs, artificially carbonated and sold nationwide as "Massanetta Spring Water" and "Massanetta Water". After the death of Dr. Chrisman in 1909, the property was sold to banker James Robert Lupton of Harrisonburg, Virginia. Lupton began to build a brick hotel at the springs. In 1912 he sold the property to the Massanetta Springs Company, but took back ownership in 1919. The same year Lupton and his wife sold the resort to Hampden-Sydney College in return for a lifetime annuity of $2,400.