“I used to think Salisbury was too small,” says Torrence, who lived in Rowan County for 18 years. “I loved the big city.”

But the first time she saw the old tavern on West Buffalo Road five miles outside West Jefferson, Torrence says she just knew she had to figure out a way to buy it.

It was like “Oh, my God, this is it,” she says. “I just felt like this was where I was supposed to be. Idon’t think I’ve ever felt that way about a house before.”

Torrence spotted the tavern, which had been used as a private residence for decades, in a newspaper real estate ad after deciding to sell her new house in Blowing Rock.

She had thought about opening a bed and breakfast if she could find the right house and drove over to look at the 128-year-old tavern at least eight different times before she made an offer contingent upon selling her house.

Up until that point, there had been very little interest in her house. “The house was like a Barbie doll,” she says. “It was a pretty house, but it had no substance.”

But on the day she made the offer for the Buffalo Tavern, her real estate agent called and said a crazy man was at her house, beating on the door.

“He thinks he wants to buy it,” she says the agent told her. “I said, ‘Well, let me get home first and clean it up.’ ”

When the man came back that night and saw the house, she says, “he was in a hurry to move in. They stood in the driveway and wrote out the contract on the hood of the car.”

This meant Torrence could buy the tavern and reinforced her belief that it was meant to be.

Left vacant for two and a half years, the house needed a lot of work. A furnace repairman told her the heating system would have to be replaced, and Torrence lived in the house for a week in November 1998 without any heat.

The plumbing and wiring also had to be redone. “If I made coffee and the refrigerator came on, it would blow the fuse,” she says.

Torrence hired a contractor with experience in historic renovations to turn the house into a bed and breakfast. Bathrooms with showers were added to three large rooms designated for guests.

Each room features an original fireplace with gas logs and an antique, oversized, claw-foot tub situated nearby.

“I think they’re too pretty to be stuck in the bathroom,” Torrence says. “I wanted them to be like a functional piece of furniture.”

The 1920 tubs, on which Torrence has placed a caddy to hold books for people who want to read while they soak, have been a big hit.

“On New Year’s Eve, a couple became engaged in the bathtub upstairs,” she says. And that same tub overflowed on another weekendwhen a Florida couple got in it at the same time.

The downstairs guest room is painted navy and trimmed in white. Upstairs, a jade and white bedroom offers a great view of Three Top Mountain to the right of the house.

Across the hall is what she calls the “honeymoon room.” With rose-colored walls, lots of lace, a brass bed dating back to the 1800s and mosquito netting over the tub, the room is perfect for newlyweds.

There are CD players in each room, but no TVs. “I wanted this to be a nice romantic place for people to get away,” Torrence says, “and women love it.”

Downstairs is a common area, where guests can relax by the fire and enjoy the complimentary drinks offered by the hostess.

Guests eat breakfast in the emerald green dining room, where Torrence serves such gourmet dishes as quiche lorraine, baked eggs, apple cognac French toast and baked pears with yogurt.

“It varies, but I try to not just have your plain old bacon and eggs,” she says.

Torrence hadn’t done a lot of cooking before opening the bed and breakfast. “I always did microwave food and ate out a lot,” she says. “I didn’t even have a recipe book. I had to go out and buy some.”

The old Buffalo Tavern sign hangs over Torrence’s work area in the kitchen. It serves as a reminder of the colorful history of the house.

Built in 1872 by master carpenter George Washington “Wash” Ray on the site of his woodworking shop, the house faces Bluff Mountain. All of the wood in the house, including the heart pine floors, came from the mountain.

Bluff Mountain is well known in the area because of the fen, a freshwater swamp, on top that runs into a waterfall on the opposite side.

The house, built on a 500-acre plot that Ray bought from the state for $25, was extravagant in its day.

The immense structure had columned front porches, a champagne glass carving on the front newel post, seven fireplaces, two sets of stairs and was the first house in Ashe County to have glass windows. They had been poured downstate and transported over the mountain roads.

When a former owner replaced them, he made a small greenhouse out of the originals.

After Ray died in 1920, his wife turned the house into a tavern and some say a brothel, according to Torrence.

Legend has it that the widow would ask young men to stop by and build her a fire, and when they did, Torrence says, she’d be spread out on the bed.

“She was quite a colorful personality,” she says.

The tavern was on what was then the main road between Tennessee and North Carolina, and two governors are reported to have stayed there over the years.

Pull-down attic stairs allowed guests to leave from a trap door in the attic. Torrence says this may have been used as an escape route during Prohibition.

A former physical therapist, she lives in the back part of the house with her two cats: Harry, a Siamese; Zena “a born in America, run of the mill, no special cat”; and her dog, Cooper, a 116-pound Shiloh shepherd. “I don’t let him out when guests are here,” she says of Cooper.

The old-timers in the community hint that Torrence and her pets may not be alone. Ghosts linger on the stairs, some say, until everyone in the house is asleep and then they go down and dance in the common area.

“Former owners have said their dogs were afraid to go up the stairs,” Torrence says.

The common area is where guests used to dance when the house was a tavern. A neighbor in her 90s who stopped byto see Torrence’s renovations told her she used to slip in and out of the front window and watch.

“She just giggled when she told that story,” Torrence says, “because she wasn’t supposed to be there.”

The piano was located against the front wall, neighbors say, and other musicians joined in.“Just about everybody knows someone who had a family member who used to play an instrument here,”she says.

Torrence doesn’t mind the ghosts. “They’re fun,” she says.“I haven’t seen them because Ihaven’t been invited yet.”

A couple of guests, however, have reported some strange happenings. One said the water came on by itself, and another said a door blew open suddenly.

“So I don’t know,” she says. “Those are their stories.”

Though she enjoys the solitude, Torrence says she has never had a desire to visit Florida until the winter months in Buffalo Tavern.

The wind on the hill on which the house sits is very cold and strong, she says.

“If you stand against the wind the right way, it’ll blow your earrings out,” she says. “That’s how forceful it is.”

Torrence has been busy since the Buffalo Tavern Bed and Breakfast opened for business last fall. Though she advertised through the Ashe County Chamber of Commerce, the Boone Chamber of Commerce and High Country Host, many of the guests were referred by other innkeepers who were already full.

“I had no idea what leaf season was like in the mountains,” she says. “It was incredible.”

Torrence says people have even started asking about reservations for next fall.

Rates, which include breakfast, range from $95 to $135 a night depending on the season. A two-night minimum stay is required.

This is the slowest time of year because of the weather, but Torrence says she has had several guests to come up because of the snow.

Couples from Raleigh and Charlotte stayed the weekend before both cities received more than a foot of snow. “Little did they know...,” she says.

One couple went sledding on the hill in front of the house.

The white, stately house is beautiful in the snow, but it’s pretty in the spring as well, according to Torrence, because of the pink rhododendron which bloom around it.

“I hope to have some outdoor weddings,” she says. “I’ve had some interest, but they would have to be small.”

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