Merchant F.H. Chamberlain began construction in 1847 on a rambling, two-story hotel along Mobile Bay, its lumber ferried down from Mobile by sailboat, and the finished building held 40 rooms behind a shaded gallery with staircases at either end. A separate dining hall and a bar known as The Texas rounded out the original complex, along with the adjacent Gunnison House, a private summer mansion that became a popular pre-war gathering spot.
When Union Admiral David Farragut led his fleet past Point Clear into Mobile Bay in 1864, famously urging his men to damn the torpedoes and press forward, Confederate shelling reportedly left a hole in the Gunnison House wall. During the war, the hotel served as a field hospital for Confederate soldiers, including survivors evacuated from the Siege of Vicksburg; roughly 300 died there and were buried on the grounds in a cemetery called Confederate Rest, a site the resort maintains today near its golf course. Daily at 4 p.m., a military-style processional still moves through the grounds and concludes with the firing of a cannon.