Grove Park Inn

Start at the front of the historic Grove Park Inn, which is also on the National Register of Historic Places.

E.W. Grove made his fortune by creating and selling various medicinal drinks and hit it big when “Grove’s Tasteless Chill Tonic”, which uniquely suspended quinine in syrupy liquid form, became a popular treatment for malaria, chills and fever. In 1907, E.W. Grove seized the opportunity to purchase the land for his Inn, inspired by the famous lodge at Yellowstone Park, along with the surrounding land for housing development. The Inn took 11 months and 27 days to complete using granite quarried from nearby Sunset Mountain and opened on July 1, 1913. For more than 100 years, the Inn has hosted U.S. Presidents, Thomas Edison, Eleanor Roosevelt, F. Scott Fitzgerald, many other celebrities plus public figures and even the notorious Al Capone, who was known to play golf on the Grove Park Inn’s Donald Ross designed course. During WWII and into the early 1950’s, the federal government used the Grove Park Inn to detain German, Italian and Japanese diplomats, some of whom opposed their respective countries during the war. The U.S. Navy also used the Inn for sailors’ rest and rehabilitation. Hotel operations began again in 1955 when the Inn was purchased by the Sammons family. Today the Inn is part of Omni Hotels.