This text was obtained via automated optical character recognition.
It has not been edited and may therefore contain several errors.

---

There is no more Clermont Harbor hotel, except in the memories and affections of some older people. It stood for many years as a landmark to sailors and shrimpers, as a curiosity to the passers-by, and as something the locals just took for granted. But it was always certainly a presence, a stately white prominence overlooking the sound and dominating the harbor beyond.
It was also a Jonah. I did not know the meaning of the word until the fire. That was when my father, one of the last owners, explained it to me.
None of the succession of owners was blessed with the art of timing, at least as far as the hotel was concerned. It was part of an ill-fated scheme to create a Riviera for New Orleans. It was nearly destroyed by a fierce hurricane in the first year of its existence, 1915. After an expensive attempt at restoration, it was wrecked financially by the great depression of 1929 and following. When a similar attempt was made in 1946, an early morning fire totally razed the structure on June 2; the grand reopening had been on June 1.
Made almost entirely of virgin cypress, its 40 rooms and 20 baths had survived the schooner that the '15 storm had hurled through its walls. It also made it through years of neglect and unoccupancy, except for the occasional
1