Heads Up: In the Backwoods of Lost River, a Gay Retreat

Christopher Jackson

The Guesthouse Lost River, which opened in 1982 in West Virginia, played a role in attracting gay visitors to the area.

The beauty of Lost River — beyond its rolling green hills and picturesque grain silos and clear streams snaking through West Virginia's hardwood forests — is its surprising cosmopolitanism. The area, in the state's eastern panhandle and just two hours from Washington, is definitively the backwoods, with poultry farms and scant cellphone service and grocery-store cashiers who say "What's that?" when asked about organic milk.

Families have long been drawn to Lost River State Park, with its $5 horseback rides for children, easy hikes and the rural retreat of Robert E. Lee's father. The Trout Pond Recreation Area, Seneca Rocks and Smoke Hole caverns are a short drive away.

Lost River is also a major destination for gay tourists from Washington: a sort of Provincetown on the Potomac (the actual river is a tributary of the Potomac River).

"Lost River is definitely a talked-about place to go among the D.C. gay community," said Michael Cole-Schwartz, the communications director for the Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights advocacy group. "It's nice to get away to the country without worrying about local attitudes that might be unfriendly toward gay people."

But even local officials acknowledge that West Virginia is not known as the most progressive of states. In the last presidential election President Obama got only 28.7 percent of the vote in Hardy County, Lost River's home.

"Live and let live" is how many locals view their relationship with the gay newcomers, said Diane Mathias, 44, who is gay and a lifelong resident of Lost River Valley. Ms. Mathias runs the Mathias Garage with her father in a nearby community.

"Some of the locals may say 'gay people are damned to hell' at church on Sunday, but they'll still come here Monday morning to get their oil changed," said Ms. Mathias, who said her regular customers know she is gay.

With the legalization of gay marriage in the District of Columbia and Maryland in recent years, more gay couples are holding their wedding receptions in Lost River. The growing gay presence also has helped the economy, as gay men and lesbians added businesses like the new Lost River Farmers Market and the Lost River Trading Post, an upscale store that opened in September in nearby Wardensville.

Lost River is one of four unincorporated communities in a judicial district with a total population of about 2,700. Its transformation began with the Guesthouse Lost River, which a local entrepreneur, Bob Dillard, opened more than 30 years ago. Reached by following a winding forest road off State Road 259 and turning left at the sign for Deer Spring Taxidermy, the Guesthouse has the feel of an upscale hunter's lodge with its stone hearths, pine walls, burgundy leather couches and the occasional antler chandelier. At the bar, mostly same-sex couples sip beer and cocktails with names like Lost River Kiss and Sex in the Mountains. The Guesthouse has a 24-hour gym and poolside bar.

"This was a safe place for people to come, and it was safe for me," said Mr. Dillard, a brawny 67-year-old who is gay. He moved to Lost River in 1978 after more than a decade abroad to help develop 2,400 acres that his brother's property development company had snapped up when a ski-resort corporation's plans to build there fell through.

"There was nothing here," said Mr. Dillard, looking out over five buildings and winding wisteria-covered walkways. When he opened the Guesthouse in 1982, there were just six rooms. There are now 18.

"Two or three couples would always be gay," he said. "Back then, in those Conestoga wagon days, I was always afraid some heterosexual couple was going to go ballistic on me, and there'd be a 'massacre at Lost River' kind of situation."

In 1984, to sidestep this potentially explosive situation, Mr. Dillard decided to make the Guesthouse an official gay establishment. He started advertising in the Washington Blade, a newspaper serving gay men and lesbians, transgender people and bisexuals. From then on, he said, "I had an incredible following of people, and I felt very comfortable because the heterosexuals who would come were friends with the gays who were coming."

Mr. Dillard sold the property in January 2012 and turned his full attention to real estate. He has developed and sold more than 400 homes in the Lost River Valley, the vast majority to gay couples.

Nothing much has changed at the Guesthouse under its new owners save the restaurant menu. But it's clear that attitudes toward gays continue to evolve.

"At my church, we have some people who will really voice their opinion about gays; they just cannot accept them and they don't want to try to understand them or have anything to do with them," said Evelyn Webster, 79, who has lived her whole life in Lost City, a community adjacent to Lost River. "But in the last 20 years, I've seen these feelings change a lot. I think because so many people have come out of the closet, and many of us find that we have someone in our family or a close friend who is gay."

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