Robbins Motel, built by Elizabeth and Walter Robbins in 1948, was located on lower Concord Street, opposite Sand Hill Road intersection, and consisted of ten individual cabins on the banks of the Contoocook River. Following the conversion of the ten individual units into a single building in 1954, the motel held a grand reopening. Mary Lyon Schofield's remodeled boathouse was at first used as a restaurant and office for the motel, but later as additional bedrooms.
In 1957, due to ill health, Walter Robbins sold the business to Myrtle and Ernest Kussmaul (1959-63). Around this time began repeated floorings of the property and a succession of new owners and new names for the business: Samuel Calkin's Heart O'Monadnock Motor Lodge (1962-65); Ruth and Beland Peirce's Pack Monadnock Motel (1965-68); and Helen and Jack Burwick's King of the Road Motor Inn (1968-74). In 1975 Frances and Daniel O'Rourke and Jean and Jack Bullock acquired the motel and completely renovated the buildings. Then called Countryside Lodging, it included a restaurant called Jack Daniel's Restaurant and Pub.
In January 1986, a midwinter flooding of the Contoocook moved the motel building, then called Jack Daniel's Motor Inn, off its foundations, and had to be demolished. About 40,000 yards of fill were added to the site to raise the land to a new height above the river; then a new eighteen-unit motel was built. It opened for business in 1987, and so far the added land elevation has warded off flooding.
SOURCE: OurChanging Town: Peterborough 1939-1989, Vol I, page 113-114.
1948-1958
Robbins Motel, Elizabeth and Walter Robbins
1958-1962
Robbins Motel, Myrtle and Ernest Kussmaul
1962-1965
Heart O' Monadnock Lodge, Samuel Calkins
1965-1968
Pack Monadnock Motel, Ruth G and Beland H Peirce
1968-1974
King of the Road Motor Inn, Helen and Jack L Burwick
1974-1975
King of the Road Motor Inn, reverts to Peirces
1975-1985
Countryside Lodging, Frances and Daniel O'Rourke, Jeana and John Bullock
1985
Grace and Ernest Patnaude
1986
Flood ruins building
1987-1989
New Jack Daniel's Motor Inn, the O'Rourkes and the Bullocks
SOURCE: Our Changing Town: Peterborough 1939-1989, page 418-419.