The Bothwell Lodge State Historic Site is located in Missouri, United States north of Sedalia. The park was established in 1974 for a lodge named after John Homer Bothwell. The park currently offers tours, hiking, and mountain biking trails.
John Bothwell purchased the property that the lodge presently resides in 1890, which he named Stonyridge Farm. From 1897 to 1928, Bothwell built the lodge in four phases on top of a rock bluff overlooking a valley. The lodge was intended to be a summer home for Bothwell and is an eclectic combination of various styles with Craftsman influences. One of the eccentricities of the home was the failed attempt by Bothwell to use a cave discovered during construction as the source of natural air conditioning. The limestone used in the home's construction was quarried on site.
A widower for most of his life, Bothwell often invited family and friends to stay at the lodge. It was to this group of individuals that he left the lodge to upon his death. The group was named the Bothwell Lodge Club, and the lodge was placed in their control so long as more than five members remained alive. Upon the death of the sixth member (reducing the membership to five), the lodge would then be offered to the state. In 1969, the property was officially offered to the state, which accepted the home five years later.
In addition to the lodge, the Bothwell Lodge State Historic Site possesses a garage/home, a separate home, hiking trails, and a playground.
Famous quotes containing the words lodge, state, historic and/or site:
“Who should come to my lodge this morning but a true Homeric or Paphlagonian man,—he had so suitable and poetic a name that I am sorry I cannot print it here,—a Canadian, a woodchopper and post-maker, who can hole fifty posts in a day, who made his last supper on a woodchuck which his dog caught.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“For I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content.”
—Bible: New Testament Philippians 4:11.
“If there is any period one would desire to be born in, is it not the age of Revolution; when the old and the new stand side by side, and admit of being compared; when the energies of all men are searched by fear and by hope; when the historic glories of the old can be compensated by the rich possibilities of the new era?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The present hour is always wealthiest when it is poorer than the future ones, as that is the pleasantest site which affords the pleasantest prospects.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)