The buildings were designed with a brutalist architecture, having a combination of dark brick, and gray concrete with an exposed aggregate of smooth white, beige, tan, and brownish river stones.

Built in the 1960s, with a rooms-only annex in the 1970s, they were closed in early April 2018 and demolished later that year, after Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam pushed for privatization and potential concessionaires refused to bid on serving the older facilities at the state's resort parks.

Cost overruns and underestimates, and a tight labor market in such a rural area, led to a need for more money from the Tennessee General Assembly in 2019, in turn allowing construction to resume in the autumn.

Proposals to build on the opposite side of the lake before closing the original inn were declined, largely to due to the lack of sufficient sewerage facilities there.

The idea for a school in Spencer was first proposed by Nathan Trogdon, a brick mason who had built the second Van Buren County Courthouse in the town.

In 1848, the Tennessee General Assembly passed a law chartering the institution, which was named in honor of activist Elihu Burritt.

His successor, William Davis Carnes, played a critical role in shaping the college's policies, most notably introducing coeducation in 1850 and instituting a strict moral and religious code.

To alleviate fears, Carnes modified the school's code to bar all communication between the sexes outside classrooms or other supervised events.

He struggled to curtail drinking, however, in spite of introducing increasingly stringent measures, including the expulsion of anyone caught in possession of alcoholic beverages.

He finally turned to local law enforcement, pleading with them to hunt down moonshiners operating in the Spencer area, and destroy their stills.

The college closed at the outset of the Civil War in 1861 as many of its male students left to fight in the Confederate army.

Martin White, a Burritt graduate remembered by students for having walked the entire distance from his home in North Carolina to Spencer to enroll at the school, was hired as president.

During the 1870s, Thomas Wesley Brents, a physician who had recently relocated to Spencer, offered his assistance to Burritt, and began raising money for the college.

In hopes of reviving the college, the Board hired a Burritt graduate, William Newton Billingsley, as president.

Billingsley stabilized the college's finances, and managed to increase enrollment to over two hundred students by the end of the decade.

At a meeting the following day, the college's administrators and students agreed to finish the year and make plans to rebuild.

Spencer is topographically isolated by the Cumberland Plateau's escarpment to the north and west, the Cane Creek Valley to the east, and the Dry Fork Gulf to the south.

State Route 111, which traverses the eastern part of Spencer, connects the town with Sparta and Cookeville to the north, and Dunlap in the Sequatchie Valley to the south.

Artist Gilbert Gaul, who gained national acclaim for his Civil War illustrations, operated from a studio south of Spencer on land currently owned by the park.