That is what a group of former students and town residents discovered when they were trying to save the Benham School, a two-story brick schoolhouse built almost a century ago for children whose parents worked in the coal camps.
It was empty and being picked at by vandals, a casualty of this area’s sharp decline in population. So in 1994, they made it into an inn, the only one in this tiny town (population 500), with the hope of drawing tourists to the lush green mountains that surround it and its bittersweet history.
Some tourists came, but not enough, and in 2000, the county bought out the original investors, and continues to subsidize the inn during the winter months.
But that does not detract from its odd charm, which often surprises first-time guests. For about $70 a night, guests can sleep in renovated classrooms whose tall windows and painted walls are more math class than motel. The hallways are lined with green lockers and tiled walls. The gym, now a banquet hall, still has its old wooden floor.
“They say life goes full circle, and I say my circle’s complete,” said Sandy Hodges, 51, the co-manager, who went to elementary school in the building, and whose husband was among the original investors.
In the mornings, the bells of the nearby Methodist church bring Ms. Hodges back to her school days, when students would walk to the church for Christmas services, and teachers were among the highest-paid in the state, thanks to the company that owned the mines. (She does not miss the asbestos, which was taken out of the building during the renovation.)
Since Ms. Hodges’s school days, Harlan County, in the southeast part of the state, has lost nearly two-thirds of its population. Mining has become more mechanized and many young people have moved away.
But business bustles in the fall, when many retirees come back to the area for school and family reunions.
“Everyone who comes here seems to go back to their childhood,” Ms. Hodges said.
It would be hard not to. SABRINA TAVERNISE
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