Try as we might to bull-doze and steam-roll over history all in the name of progress, small traces of our past often escape the relentless pillaging of times gone by. Such is the case concerning the Empire Inn. 

In 1931, William Ruff purchased a portion of the old John McGrath farm along Route 17 at Morsston. He soon made extensive improvements on the property with the intention of conducting a summer boarding house. The house would later be transformed into a restaurant and, with the end of prohibition, a tavern that became known as Ruff’s Morsston Inn. In 1946, the name was changed to Walter’s Inn under the new proprietor, Samuel Walter, who three years later, sold the road-side tavern to Simon Zemachov. The road-house was then rechristened as the Empire Inn, upon which it was known until its demise.

Today, the site of the Empire Inn lies buried under tons upon tons of soil and rock debris that form the Beaver Lake Road overpass and associated raised portions of the Quickway as it bypasses Old Morsston. As shown in the Times’ photo, fire and earth-moving equipment altered the landscape as it was known in 1962. But today, across old Route 17 from the buried Empire Inn site, one relict has survived. Thrown over the guardrail where thick roadside brambles act as thorny sentries, lies the post, along with the concrete base that anchored it, that once held the old Empire Inn sign.