The cache is located in beautiful downtown Kenansville, Florida.
Kenansville was a late 1800's cattle town on the now defunct
Okeechobee spur of Henry Flagler's Florida East Coast Railroad. The
railroad once ran right through town but the tracks and the depot
are now gone. The place was given the name Kenansville in 1914 in
honor of the third wife of Henry Flagler who was the former Mary
Lily Kenan.
Some folks say that this is the hotel that inspired a young
Elvis Presley to write his hit "Heartbreak Hotel", but the true
account as told to me by team:CHETT is as follows:
The building was built in 1915 by Robert Phillips of North
Carolina, who was on the railroad construction crew, and his
brother Wallace. Robert believed he had found the paradise for
hunting and fishing, and decided to stay. Both of them died in
1935. The hotel was first known as the Piney Woods Inn, with a
general store, dining room and kitchen on the first floor and hotel
rooms upstairs. Later, it was called the Tropical Hotel. Next door
to the west on the vacant lot was Gettis McClelland's Meat Market.
James Webb, whose brother ran Webb's General Store,owned and ran
the hotel later and let rooms at $3 for a double for the first
night, $2 for each additional night. Webb arrived in Kenansville in
1940. After three years, he moved to Arkansas, then moved back here
three years after that. He bought the property at that time and
operated it for a number of years......When Elvis Presley had the
hit song, Webb changed its name to Heart Break Hotel. Many
photographers and reporters visited the building, believing it to
have been the inspiration for the song, instead of the other way
around. Nashville drummer Tommy Durden and Mae Axton wrote the song
in 1955 while vacationing in Miami. The Miami Herald had covered a
local suicide and printed a line from the suicide note.....'I walk
a lonely street'.....Mae and Tommy seized on that line and decided
that a 'Heartbreak Hotel' would be a logical thing to find on a
street of that name. They wrote the song and pitched it to Col. Tom
Parker who was Elvis's manager. Parker said that if they would
include Elvis in the credits he would allow it to be recorded.
The town was originally a little ways off from the present
location and was moved in 1915 to be closer to the RR. It was a
major turpentine processing area and was expected to grow
substantially, and it did. At one time there were around 600
(counted) residents with more turpentine workers who were not ever
counted closely. The building you see across the street was the
bank, built in 1914 and failed during the depression. It was
reopened later as a store but has been empty for many years. The
school building down the road was built in 1916 with a grant of
five acres and $6000 from Henry Flagler himself and was used off
and on for many years. The Post Office was a small wooden building
and was moved to Adams Ranch headquarters west of Ft. Pierce when
the new modern building was put in. If you go past the ranch on
highway 68 you will be able to see it from the road.
This is a Letterbox Hybrid cache. It is a camo'd water-tight
medium sized tupperware container. Inside is a log book and pen,
some geo-trinkets and a stamp. Please bring your own stamp and ink
pad if you would like to add your stamp to the log. If you don't
have a stamp, feel free to draw a picture in the log OR just sign
your geocaching name to the log.
NOTE: The hotel is now open for business.....come by and
take a tour of the rooms; they are impressive!