When a Lancaster County Hotel Took to the Road

Did you know a Lancaster County hotel was once hauled from Wabank to Lititz in one hundred four-horse wagon loads?

It sounds exaggerated, almost like the setup to a tall tale, but the old Wabank House really did live one of the most dramatic lives of any building in Lancaster County history. Built in the mid-1850s along the banks of the Conestoga, the hotel was envisioned as a grand summer retreat, a place of scenery, leisure, music, boating, and fine dining just a few miles from Lancaster City. Contemporary descriptions make clear that this was no modest inn. The Wabank House rose four stories high, stretched 105 feet in length, and featured broad verandas that wrapped around the structure. At a final cost of about $60,000, it was one of the county’s most ambitious resort projects of its day.

And for a brief moment, it seems to have delivered on that ambition. Newspaper accounts described it as a “fashionable and favorite place of summer resort,” complete with gardens, fountains, baths, promenade grounds, musicians, and boats for guests seeking what one ad called “innocent amusement.” Social groups met there. Banquets were held there. The Lancaster Bar Association hosted a major dinner there. One report even claimed that James Buchanan intended to spend the summer at Wabank, which shows the level of prestige the place had attained, whether or not that plan ever fully came to pass. At its height, the hotel had one hundred rooms, a dining room that could seat three hundred people, and enough bustle that management once employed forty waiters.

But Wabank’s glory proved surprisingly short-lived. By the late 1850s, its popularity had already begun to fade. The property fell into foreclosure and in 1858 sold for just $9,150, a stunning drop from its construction cost. A few years later, in 1863, only the hotel building itself was sold again, this time for a mere $4,000 to Samuel Lichtenthaler, owner of the Lititz Springs Hotel. Instead of operating two separate hotels, he made an extraordinary decision. He had the Wabank House dismantled piece by piece, loaded onto wagons, and moved roughly twelve miles to Lititz. According to the account preserved by Cory Van Brookhoven, the job took months and required one hundred trips by four-horse teams. Imagine the sight: a procession of heavy wagons creaking over Lancaster County roads, carrying the bones of a grand riverside resort toward a second life in another town.

By July 4, 1864, the Wabank House had been rebuilt beside the Lititz Springs Hotel, where it was absorbed into the growing resort there. A dome and observatory were added on top, and the enlarged complex was praised as one of the finest places of resort in the region. For a time, the building that had once overlooked the Conestoga now helped define the hospitality landscape of Lititz. Yet even that second act would not last. In July 1873, fire broke out in the former Wabank portion of the hotel complex. Despite urgent calls for help, the blaze destroyed the old structure. What had first risen in grandeur along the Conestoga and then survived an almost unbelievable relocation across the county was finally lost to flames.

Today, very little remains to remind people of what stood there. But that is exactly why the story is so compelling. The Wabank House was not simply a hotel. It was a bold investment, a fashionable retreat, a failed speculation, a marvel of disassembly and transport, and ultimately a vanished landmark with two lives and two endings.

Howard Kriebel’s mention of its move in Seeing Lancaster County from a Trolley Window is fascinating on its own, but once you begin digging deeper, the tale becomes even better. It is one of those old Lancaster County stories that feels almost too improbable to be true, which is probably why it deserves to be remembered.

Stories like this are exactly what make Seeing Lancaster County from a Trolley Window such a fascinating read. Now available on Amazon.

---

Never Miss a New Article

Never miss a new article by signing up for email updates below. Be sure to follow Uncharted Lancaster on Facebook or Instagram for exclusive content.

---