Mountain ranges and the views afforded from their summits were beginning to attract growing interest and attention as many people in the 19th century recognized the value and insight to be gained from gazing at inspiring vistas. The Summit House, built in 1864 on Sugar Loaf Mountain in South Deerfield, Massachusetts, was a hotel sixty by thirty feet and capable of accommodating twenty boarders. The porch that ran around the building afforded a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view. The summit was reached by a “good carriage road” and boasted a “view unsurpassed by any in the western part of the state.”