The NuWray Hotel stretches out beside Burnsville’s town square like a graceful dowager awakening from her afternoon nap, a Southern vision of rocking chairs, porch, and balcony. As the oldest continuously operating hotel in the state, The NuWray is finally rising from a 30-year slumber that saw the once-stately property slide into a steep decline.

James & Amanda Keith photograph by Tim Robison

“This should have been condemned,” admits James Keith, who now runs the circa-1833 hotel with his wife, Amanda. “Give up, tear it down, or power through” were their only choices, he says.

The fruits of their labor were all set to debut in August 2024 — just in time to house rescue workers and swift-water response teams who poured into the area immediately after Hurricane Helene swept through. Even The NuWray’s new metal sign was ripped from the front porch and left crumpled like a gum wrapper in the storm’s aftermath.

Through it all, the Keiths wouldn’t give up on The NuWray, Amanda says. “It still was the sweet building on the square.”

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In its 192-year history, it’s been referred to by many names, from the Nu-Wray Hotel to the Nu-Wray Inn, and now The NuWray Hotel. When it first opened for guests, Yancey County had just been formed, and the town of Burnsville wouldn’t be founded for another year, when a ginseng trader, Bacchus Smith, built a small tavern and trading post out of logs. It had eight rooms — four on the bottom and four on the top — where travelers could stay the night.

Around 1867, Smith sold the place to Garrett Ray, who expanded it, keeping the original log-constructed section and adding an east wing that stretched along the square. He named it Ray’s Hotel, which locals dubbed “The Old Ray.” In 1915, Ray’s daughter Julia and her husband, William Brian Wray, inherited the hotel after Ray died, and renovated it again, adding a west wing, a bigger kitchen and dining room, and running water and electricity. They renamed it “the Nu-Wray Hotel” as a play on The Old Ray.

The Keiths agree: Even though The NuWray is filling with guests again, with a project like this, “there’s not a ‘done.’ ” photograph by Tim Robison

Julia and W.B. ran it together until he died in 1932, and Julia kept the hotel running with the help of their children until she died 35 years later. Her children, Annie Wray Bennett and Rush Wray, kept it going until they died in the ’80s. Other family members stepped in to help, but the Wrays finally sold the property in 1993. It changed hands several times after that, and went through foreclosure.

That’s when the Keiths found it.

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James and Amanda took a roundabout route to their career as historic-inn restorers. As students in Greensboro — where she got her master’s degree in publishing and he got his master’s and doctoral degrees in musical conducting — they found a historic home near the UNCG campus and restored it. There, they earned reputations for throwing parties and hosting visiting scholars.

After they graduated and got jobs in their respective fields, they returned to their mutual attraction to old buildings that need a little love. This time, they bought a 1906 Colonial Revival in Greensboro that they restored and opened as a bed-and-breakfast, and discovered they loved hospitality as much as restoration.

Historic photos show the early-20th-century opulence of the former Nu-Wray Inn. photograph by Tim Robison

The couple was looking for another project when they bought a cabin in Bakersville. On the drive back and forth between the mountains and Greensboro, they regularly passed through Burnsville, where they first crossed paths with the Nu-Wray. Even in disrepair, the bones of the old hotel and its historic place in the center of its community intrigued them.

In October 2021, the Keiths bought the almost-derelict hotel for $1.5 million. “We knew we were taking a big bite,” Amanda says. But until they opened the walls and ceilings, they didn’t truly understand just how big.

During the Nu-Wray’s first three iterations, building codes were loose or non-existent. In these remote areas of the mountains, people built however they could, with whatever they had.

The Keiths kept some bookings that were made by the previous owners, which proved to be a learning experience. At a wedding reception right after they bought the hotel, James stood to one side of a dining room full of guests and realized the floor was bowing beneath their feet.

Annie Wray Bennett (pictured) ran the former Nu-Wray Inn with her brother for about 20 years after their mother died. painting by Franklin Moody

In fact, the entire place was a renovation nightmare: The original knob-and-tube wiring was still hot and ready to spark a fire. Load-bearing walls had no studs. A 55-foot steel beam made in Yancey County had to be installed in the basement just to keep the structure standing.

Along the way, they tried to save or highlight everything they could. In an upper hallway, the original wall was left uncovered, so you can see the logs — and the way it all sloped. In an upstairs parlor, Amanda covered a section of wall with plexiglass so guests could see wallpaper that was used in the hotel in the late 1800s and wood siding that was used in the 1833 version of the building.

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The new NuWray has one more phase to be unveiled, which is expected to be completed in late May: The reopening of its restaurant.

For decades, the old Nu-Wray was known for family-style dinners of Appalachian classics, like smoked hams made in a smokehouse on site.

Recreating those exact foods is difficult in the 21st century, since many recipes — like the formula for those hams — are lost to history.

Today’s rooms are a graceful mix of old and new. photograph by Tim Robison

Instead, the Keiths hope to pay homage to the hotel’s storied meals of the past. They’ve hired Peter Crockett, who worked at Isa’s Bistro in Asheville, to run the newly renovated kitchen.

James also is busy in the basement setting up a bar to be called The Washroom. Behind it, the centerpiece will be the original wooden laundry agitator, once run by steam and finally hooked up to electricity in the 1940s.

Meanwhile, the big stone fireplace is burning again in the lobby. Locals stop by on afternoon walks to sit by the fire and catch up in a place that has been there all their lives. So much of it, Amanda says, lives on in people’s memories. Now, they’ll have a chance to make new ones of their own.

The NuWray Hotel
102 Town Square
Burnsville, NC 28714
(828) 678-7070
nuwray.com