Read time: 6 min.

Does your family have a legendary story about an experience so terrible that it’s been retold for years? I’m talking about the kind of spectacular disaster that was miserable for everyone involved at the time, but has since become folklore. My family does, and it involved a night’s stay at the Floridian Motel in St. Clairsville, Ohio.

I’m a birthright Quaker. Isn’t that weird? Back in the waning days of the last millennium, the pastor of our church organized a trip through Ohio to learn how other Friends practiced their faith. Mom signed up, along with my stepdad, a dyed-in-the-wool Methodist. Most of the travelers were couples from our meeting, but my sister Sally tagged along, too. I stayed home, which turned out to be a wise decision coming from an eight-year-old.

The group traveled almost all the way across Ohio before winding up in St. Clairsville near the West Virginia border. It was long after sunset. Unfortunately, every respectable hotel in the area seemed to be booked solid with visitors attending the nearby Zanesville Pottery Lovers Show and Sale! My family preferred reputable accommodations, usually something under the Wyndham umbrella, but with little alternative and the hour growing late, they reluctantly checked into the Floridian Motel. It was a decision that would haunt our family vacations for decades.

The Floridian stood along US-40, the old National Road. Details about its early history are scarce, but judging by the oldest postcard I found, it probably started life as a tourist court. The card proudly proclaimed the Floridian to be “One of Ohio’s finest,” complete with a “Restaurant serving breakfast, lunch and dinners.” Back then, the establishment offered eighteen units equipped with tile showers and central heating. It appears to have been a respectable place for weary motorists to spend the night.

By the time my family checked in, the Floridian was decidedly not one of Ohio’s finest. The first warning came before anyone even opened the door: a Chock full o’Nuts coffee can filled with assorted nuts and bolts sat on the stoop, accompanied by a rusty chain of unknown origin. Were they spare parts? Leftovers from an abandoned repair job? The remains of some primitive security system? Nobody knew, and nobody particularly wanted to find out.

Unfortunately, the accommodations themselves did little to inspire confidence either. Inside, Mom and Sally encountered a TV bracket sans television and dingy wood paneling interrupted by rectangles where paintings had once hung. The whole place had the unmistakable air of an establishment that had stopped trying.

Still, the Floridian hadn’t always been such a dump. During the fifties, it advertised itself as “Paradise on the Hilltop” in postcards, boasting “36 Ultra-Modern Rooms, private baths, many rooms air conditioned individually controlled, free T.V. in 25 rooms, 9 quiet off-highway units, swimming pool, children’s playground.” As if all that weren’t enough, guests could enjoy an “Excellent restaurant on premises open for breakfast, lunch and dinners.” The Floridian sounded like quite a place in its heyday, but after half a century, paradise had packed its bags, checked out, and left its guests to fend for themselves.

Back in the room, the indignities kept coming: Mom remembers a cracked bathroom sink, while Sally recalls watching a bug scurry down its drain. When she pointed it out, my stepdad hushed her for Mom’s sake. Then it was time to turn in for the night: the mattress was decorated with cigarette burns and other suspicions best left to the imagination, and Mom and Sally shared a bed. They spent all night rolling towards each other thanks to the V-shaped mattress!

As awful as the room was, the Floridian saved its biggest surprise for the following morning. As it turns out, my family spent the night in one of those nine quiet, off-highway units advertised in the fifties. When Mom, Sally, and Jerry stepped outside in the daylight, they discovered that their downstairs room was perched precariously along the edge of a ravine!

After a night spent worrying about bugs and crashing into her daughter on a sorry old mattress, Mom discovered that the entire room seemed to be hanging off the side of a hill! Heights are not her strong suit, and I can only imagine the relief she felt when they finally escaped.

The Floridian had delivered a complete package of horrors: a suspicious approach, decrepit accommodations, questionable sanitation, cigarette-scorched bedding, and a surprise cliffside perch. Nobody suffered any lasting harm, but the experience was so comprehensively awful that it immediately seared itself into our family’s oral history. Nearly thirty years later, somebody only has to mention the Floridian to bring the whole miserable episode roaring back to life.

I never made it to the Floridian myself, but I’ve stayed in some terrible motels. Still, none of those experiences in North Little Rock or Marston, Missouri, hold a candle to the Floridian. As I see it, there’s something magical about a motel that could once advertise itself as paradise but deteriorated into a place where guests were wary of hopping under the covers or glancing too long at the plumbing.

Unfortunately, for anyone who might actually enjoy spending a night in such a memorable establishment, the Floridian is gone. A modern Knights Inn built in the late nineties occupies the site today, and little remains of the old motel beyond part of the sketchy driveway that once descended to those quiet rear rooms. The Floridian Lounge apparently survives inside Knights Inn and preserves a little of the old establishment’s identity, if in name only.

That’s probably for the best. The original Floridian may be gone, but its reputation is secure for my family. Plenty of motels have offered us a good night’s sleep over the years, and we’ve forgotten nearly all of them. We’ll always remember the one with the rusty chain, the mystery bug, the cigarette-burned bed, and the surprise ravine! Nearly thirty years later, there’s nothing left to do but wait for the inevitable rush of locals to tell me how pigheaded my assessment was. Let’s go!