Masonic Lodge No. 170 was built at the corner of Eighth and Nelson Avenue in 1920. The lodge met upstairs and rented the downstairs to a furniture store. By the end of the 1920s, the first floor was used by a wholesale grocery company for storage.
In the early 1930s, the Masons could not afford the building and sold it to A. F. Bullard who, in turn, sold it to Stealey Preacher, the Walton County Clerk of Court. Preacher and his wife Ella converted the upstairs into the Lake Hotel. He maintained his law office downstairs, and she ran a dining room.
In the 1940s, the building was sold to pharmacist Marshall James Lightfoot and served as both a drug store and hotel until his death in 1965. The photograph above was taken when the first floor was occupied by Lightfoot’s and the second floor was the Lake Hotel.
After Lightfoot’s, the lower floor was a restaurant and bus station, and the upper floor was a men’s rooming house. The building was closed in 1997 due to an electrical fire in the kitchen. It was purchased by a local family and reopened in