Landscape Information
In 1896 Dr. John Gehring started the Gehring Clinic at his Bethel home, housing patients in the nearby Prospect Hotel. Gehring became well known for treating the nervous disorders of prominent businessmen, politicians, and professors with his “work-cure” therapy, combining mental health treatment with physical activity in the rural mountains of western Maine.
After the Prospect Hotel burned in 1913, Gehring, William Bingham II, and other former patients formed the Bethel Inn Corporation to build and operate a 60-room Victorian hotel and private club that supported Gehring’s practice. Hotel patients chopped wood, gardened, swam, played tennis, and snowshoed in the resort-like setting. Over time they cleared the forest for a nine-hole golf course, seven holes of which remain after a 1988 expansion to 18 holes designed by Geoffrey Cornish.
The hotel is situated at the south end of Bethel Hill Common, in an L-shaped configuration which creates a receiving courtyard accessed by a lozenge-shaped entrance drive. Lawn punctuated with deciduous trees populates the forecourt, with a large pool house and heated swimming pool adjacent to the main hotel and golf course between the hotel and the mountains beyond.
The inn remains an active resort with a landscape of mature trees, rolling topography, scenic views of the golf course and mountains, and extensive manicured lawns bordering the forest. The main entrance off the common is largely unchanged, although the resort has expanded to include townhouses, and other visitor amenities It was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1977.
