These days, Palmyra Township’s Old Stagecoach Inn is a deteriorating hulk, but it’s soon to be the subject of a Discovery Channel documentary set to air in late 2024 or early 2025.
The series celebrates unusual, abandoned or interesting places people don’t know about, said Doug Rice, the inn’s owner since 1994.
When filming started in March, the producers gave Rice two weeks to come up with proof that local lore had factual basis. Did Abraham Lincoln give speeches at the inn during his 1860 presidential campaign? Was the Old Stagecoach Inn a stop on the underground railroad? Did Bill Cody, a.k.a. Buffalo Bill, and his Wild West Show companions stay there multiple times, enjoying free room and board?
“This is a lot like forensic science more than anything else. It’s just conclusions that you can draw together. So I don’t got no proof, but I do have conclusions, and he was impressed,” Rice said.
One of Rice’s conclusions centers on a small door in the back of a second story closet. Rice said bounty and slave hunters patrolled two known escape routes east and west of the Stagecoach Inn, and that fleeing slaves had to constantly find alternative routes.
“Why would you have a little door in the back of a closet, and this door is only maybe 30 inches tall and 15 inches wide, that takes you to a hiding spot above the stage freight station? Why would anybody build such a small door if that was just for storage of goods? That wouldn’t make sense. It had to have been built for hiding people.”
Another conclusion: Rice knew railroads had largely replaced stagecoaches as the primary means of traveling and shipping freight by the 1860s, but that inns remained the center of local life. Men enjoyed libations inside, and men and women gathered on the grounds to share news, exchange gossip and meet and speak with travelers.
It stands to reason that Lincoln could have stopped there to drum up support for his presidential bid, and that abolitionist John Brown could have frequented the inn to gather support for his cause, Rice said.
Superstar Buffalo Bill? From 1873-1916 he appeared in dozens of shows in Akron and Youngstown, and since Tallmadge Road was the main route between the two towns, it stands to reason he would have stopped at the Old Stagecoach Inn more than once, Rice said. (The Wild West legend also appeared once in Kent, on March 17, 1874.)
“He was like a Taylor Swift. Everybody knew who Buffalo Bill Cody was,” Rice said. “If I was a business owner and I had a big celebrity like Tom Cruise coming into town, I’d definitely invite him to my restaurant, tell him you can eat and drink all you want, because just knowing he’s going to be there is going to bring the whole town in. I’m going to have all kinds of business.”
Early history
Step back about 200 years, to 1832. The Ohio legislature had only decided in 1807 to form Portage County, pulling the land from Trumbull County, and Palmyra Township was all of 22 years old. Settlers were scarce: in 1830 the entire county could only claim 18,826 people, and in 1832, Palmyra tallied 113 voters, all of them white males. (At that time, no one else could vote.)
What Palmyra did have was a post office and a station on two major stagecoach routes: the Cleveland-Wellsville and Cleveland-Pittsburgh lines. The Portage-Columbiana section ran on the original path of Scott’s Corners Road before meeting Tallmadge Road just east of Route 225.
Recognizing a good business opportunity when he saw it, prominent Palmyra businessman and farmer Francis Lewis started firing bricks in a kiln he’d built at what is now County Road 18 and Route 225. In 1832, he built the inn, then a simple two-story Greek Revival-style building with guest rooms on the second floor, and ran the hotel for years.
That’s one story, and it’s the one that is inscribed on a National Register of Historic Places marker outside the Old Stagecoach Inn.
In his book “Portage Pathways,” though, author Loris Troyer noted that no one knows when the inn was actually built. He presented former inn owner Nickolas Stone’s version: that construction began in 1808, halted during the War of 1812 and resumed shortly afterward. If this story is true, the Old Stagecoach Inn opened in 1818, Troyer wrote.
Rice, who has done his own research, points to an early 1800s structure attached to the main building, and says it may have served as the area’s first store and post office. The Ohio History Connection notes that Palmyra’s first store was established in 1813, so it could be, he said.
“There were settlers here going back to the late 1700s. The mail run that ran between Pittsburgh and Cleveland was a heavily run route. Everything had to come in by stagecoach,” he said.
In its heyday, the inn was the undisputed center of local life. Folks gathered there to collect mail the stagecoach would bring in, get the latest news from the outside world and meet and speak with travelers.
The inn served stagecoach drivers, teamsters, farmers and other travelers on the Portage-Columbiana section of the stage road, as well as travelers on what are now Tallmadge Road and Route 225. They could rent a room with a fireplace, a washbasin and a dresser for 50 cents a night in the 1830s, and unheated rooms for a quarter, Rice said.
Hardy (or destitute) souls could sleep in an unheated hayloft above the inn’s stable for 10 cents a night, Rice said, referring to notes compiled by former owners.
By the time the Knights of Pythias, a secret fraternity focused on caring for needy community members, bought the inn in 1888, stagecoach travel had largely given way to railroads. The Old Stagecoach Inn changed with the times, becoming more of a bar than anything else. The Knights wanted to hold their monthly meetings in the inn, but could not obtain a charter if their meeting room was attached to a tavern.
Undaunted, the Knights added a third floor with a separate entrance. They gained their charter, occupied the Stagecoach Inn until 1960 and disbanded in 1965. Local lore holds that the Knights would open the inn’s doors to homeless and poor families, many of whom were so far gone that they did not live to see the next day, Palmyra Historical Society President Della Evans said.
During the Prohibition era (1920-1933), the building may also have operated as a speakeasy, though Evans said there is no proof. Considering that the oath a Knight takes includes a statement that he is not “unlawfully engaged in the wholesale or retail sale of intoxicating liquors or narcotics,” for the inn’s owners to have operated a speakeasy would have been interesting indeed. If they did, they never got caught.
Would-be preservationists
Though Rice is the most recent inn owner who’s tried to restore the deteriorating building, he may not be the last. With his blessing, Evans is working to obtain grants to buy and save the structure.
The Old Stagecoach Inn’s inclusion on the National Registry of Historic Places doesn’t guarantee its future. Such buildings can be razed should they fall into sufficient disrepair, but Evans is determined not to let that happen.
“Palmyra grew up around that hotel,” she said. “This was considered an upscale place. It was such an important waystop for the early settlers. This was an oasis for travelers. Now, it’s like stepping into a time capsule. When you actually walk in that building, you get what it was like to travel: the lack of heat, the lack of water … things we take for granted. It’s very eye opening, and it makes a lot of things you learned in school make sense.”
Stone, an Akron area antique dealer, escape artist and magician, and his wife Betty had dreams of restoring the Old Stagecoach when they bought it in 1974, but found the job too much. They recorded their research about the building’s history in writing and passed it on to Rice when he took ownership in 1994.
Also interested in the inn’s preservation was the late Wanda Walter, a Palmyra resident who often changed the wreaths on the inn’s many entrances. Walter never owned the inn, but she wanted to add a touch of home to a place that many people did once call home, Evans said. Walter died in 2005, but her legacy proved she loved more than the inn.
A side note: concerned that development was displacing wildlife, Walter willed 80 acres of land that had been in her family for generations to the Portage Park District. The northern border of the property meets the original path of Scotts Corner Road, though that route now ends at McClintocksburg Road.
The northern tip of the preserve is less than half a mile from the inn.
The property includes about 50 acres of woods interspersed with 30 acres of fields, streams and wetlands. The Walter Preserve is not open to the public, though arrangements can be made for staff-guided hikes and specially permitted research and education.
“She was a very conservation and community-minded person. She had a soft spot for Mother Nature and wildlife, and she didn’t want the land to be developed,” said Portage Park Director Chris Craycroft. “It had been in her family for a long time and she just wanted to preserve it.”
Wendy DiAlesandro is a former Record Publishing Co. reporter and contributing writer for The Portager.