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A CASTLE ON A HILL
follows portions of the old Spanish Trail, connects the cities of St. Augustine, Florida, and San Diego, California.- Construction of this roadway began in 1915, and to this day along this route, the only visible vistas of seawater are along the Gulf Coast of Mississippi.
Pine Hills' management eagerly captured the public's attention with an assortment of professionally printed brochures that highlighted their beautifully decorated guest rooms; however, it was the luxurious lounge that caught the interest of most visitors. A literal feast for the eyes, some called it, but to many the real treat was neither the scenery nor the accommodations—it was the food. Genuine "Creole and Southern plantation" dishes were prepared by renowned chefs. A hint about the atmosphere and service may be gleaned from a hotel mail-out, which referred to the Pine Hills' restaurant as "spacious, dignified dining." Numerous other amenities were also promoted via brochures:
convention halls, recreation rooms, elevators, tennis and handball courts, an artesian well, a small boat marina, and a long fishing pier.
The intentionally extravagant hotel was the focal point of the Pine-Hills-on-the-Bay development. Set at the apex of the hill that dominated 62 acres and facing 1,500 feet of bay-front land, the hotel was touted as the hub, the keystone, upon which an even grander tourist destination complex would evolve. But this was not to be. After less than two years into the speculative venture, two disastrous events occurred from which the hotel's management never recovered. The first, like a dagger to the heart, was the completion in late 1927 of a wooden two-lane bridge across the Bay of St. Louis. The two-mile long erector set-style bridge made it possible for motorists to drive directly from Bay St. Louis to Pass Christian in only a matter of minutes. Tourists roared past the spectacular lodgings of Pine Hills, often without even realizing it, to spend their time and money at
other hotels along the coast. In fact, many vacationers found their way to Pine Hills' sister hotel, the also new— and even larger—Edgewater Gulf Hotel, located between Gulfport and Biloxi on the current site of the Edgewater Mall. The nail in the coffin, however, was the stock market crash in New York on Thursday, October 24, 1929. The collapse of Wall Street plunged America and the world into a catastrophic economic depression that lasted until the early 1950s.
The new bridge adversely affected Pine Hills' business virtually overnight. In an effort to put a new face on the problem, management came up with a clever idea. They changed the identity of the hotel and began a new campaign to target a different type of clientele. They added several new amenities: an 18-hole golf course, a rustic golf lodge built of pine logs that was equipped "with steel lockers and shower baths for women as well as men," a Club Kennels house complete with some of the "best bird dogs in the South," and a stable
MISSISSIPPI 31