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Photo Above: Mountain Lake Lodge with Salt Pond Pub
Mountain Lake Lodge, which debuted in 1851 as Salt Pond, has been inducted into Historic Hotels of America, which is the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s official program for recognizing and promoting “the finest historic hotels in America.”
Mountain Lake Lodge, famous as a filming sight for the movie “Dirty Dancing,” is at 4,000 feet elevation and is surrounded by a 2,600-acre preserve and bird sanctuary which is home to more than 20 miles of hiking trails, including the short walk to the top of 4,360 Bald Knob for fabulous views of the New River Valley. For a complete inventory of hikes in the area, visit the Giles County Trail Center, located at Mountain Lake Lodge, which offers 43 rooms in the Stone Lodge as well as cabins and a second lodge with 16 rooms.
In recent years, Mountain Lake Lodge has emphasized modernizations, regular events, fine dining, crafts and artworks, with less emphasis on its namesake lake, which has undergone cycles of filling and emptying over the centuries in dizzyingly fast timeframes for geology. The lake, which was largely emptied most recently in 2008, continues to fascinate geologists and hydrologists with its unusual underpinning of three different geological formations — the Martinsburg, Juniata and Clinch.
The story above first appeared in our January / February 2026 issue.
