William Warne, the publican who had established the Pleasant Point Accommodation House in the 1864, applied in 1870 to the Canterbury Provincial Government for a conditional license to establish an accommodation house at Opihi. The government withheld the license however, as Warne did not pay the necessary fee to the Provincial Sub-treasurer. In 1872 Henry John Le Cren, a merchant of Timaru, was granted 33 acres by the Crown near Collett's Ford, the Opihi River crossing of an early route to the Mackenzie Country. Le Cren sold this in 1875 to John William Jones of Kakahu. 'Bullocky' Jones (as he was known) was a local identity who had ranged the trackless territory as far as Lake Pukaki with his bullock team during the pioneering years of the 1850s and 1860s. In 1878 Jones had architect W. Upton design a hotel for his Opihi site. The limestone building was constructed by local stonemasons' Charles Morton McDougall and James Walker, and probably opened for business at the beginning of 1879. In March that year, the hotel (which was reported as 'doing a good up-country business') and 105 acres were offered for rent, with immediate possession. This action may have been prompted by financial problems, as Jones was bankrupt by July 1879. The hotel and 103 acres were put up for sale by Jones's creditors, and purchased by Timaru auctioneer Moss Jonas, whose firm was handling the sale. Jonas on-sold the property in August 1880 to George Crozier, a contractor of Pleasant Point. Neither Jonas nor Crozier appear to have operated the hotel themselves, but let it to a series of licensees. In June 1880 Adam Gilmour was issued a license for the hotel conditional on carrying out repairs to the stables and sheep yards within two months. The license passed to Joseph Nelson in September 1880. In December that year, Nelson was fined 5 shillings and 7 shillings costs for allowing gambling with dice on his premises. In March 1881, the nefarious Nelson was charged with selling liquor after midnight. The charge was dismissed when a customer claimed that the refreshment was lemonade for his children. Nelson applied for the temporary transfer of his license to Thomas Butler in June 1881, but was refused. In September however, Nelson was permitted to temporarily transfer the license to G. Butler. Butler took over the license in December 1881, on condition that if any infringement of the Licensing Act occurred, the license would be cancelled at once. Unfortunately the history of the hotel in the decades which follow is unclear as the licensing record is incomplete. Apparently it remained a social centre for the district, although it lost its license at some point before 1906. This was reputedly because a local farmer, who disapproved of his workers' patronage of the establishment, reported to authorities that the hotel's distance was a few chains short of the required five miles (eight kilometres) from the licensed establishments of Pleasant Point. The license was cancelled as a consequence. The most likely time for this to have occurred was in the mid 1890s, in the wake of the Alcoholic Liquor Sale Control Act of 1893. This provided for a local poll for licenses, and led to a period of 'general reduction' when many hotels throughout the country were closed. A 1957 article also relates that the licence was lost 'nearly 70 years ago'. The former hotel apparently served subsequently as a boarding house for fishermen, salmon having first been liberated in the Opihi in 1877. George Crozier appears to have gone bankrupt in 1893, and his creditors sold the property to Elisabeth Caroline Malthus. Malthus in turn sold the property to Charles Bowker, a Timaru land broker in 1895. A new era for the former hotel began in 1906, when Bowker sold the property to Opihi farmer William Beedell. Beedell transmitted the property to Kingsdown farmer John Dunicombe at the beginning of 1907, but in June that year Dunicombe transferred it back to siblings Mary, Gertrude and William 'Billy' Beedell as tenants-in-common. The Beedells' named their new home “Walnut Grove', and the area became popularly known as Beedells' Corner. In 1939, following Mary's death, Billy and his cousin Cheldon Morkham Blackmore became tenants-in common. Accounts suggest the men did not get on, and lived separate lives within the building. The eccentric pair became local identities in their old age. Blackmore became sole owner in 1960, and remained there perhaps as late as the early 1980s. Following his death, the building was abandoned to the elements. The property was purchased by Kevin and Francis Schwass in 1994. The property was subdivided in 1998, and the block containing the derelict hotel building was sold to Struan and Fiona Sullivan, who are in the process of restoring and renovating it as their family home (March 2004). Seen in broad perspective, accommodation houses and country hotels could be the key to the larger settlement pattern of a region - with many forming the kernel around which other settlements grew. This was particularly the case in Canterbury, where their importance in this region of rapidly expanding pastoral development over a more-or-less uniform landscape was apparently much greater than elsewhere. Pleasant Point was one such place; the township growing around the accommodation house established by William Warne in 1864. Most of these early accommodation house/hotels have been replaced with more substantial buildings. However, probably due to changing transport routes and the impact of more stringent licensing laws, the Opihi Hotel had a short life and was bypassed by later developments. Consequently it provides both in scale and situation, a good example of the first generation of rural hotels in New Zealand.