What a delight to find these precedent book before MCO and look at the range of openings available for analysis at the time. I turned first to the Cambridge Springs Defense, of which I have personal anecdote, but first here is a little history of the two tournaments held there:—

The Hotel Rider was constructed in 1895-1897. The Rider was the "king of the hill" among several fine hotels in the town including the Riverside and the Bartlett. The Rider had 500 rooms, each equipped with a telephone. The hotel was later renamed the Vanadium and subsequently was sold to the Polish National Alliance in 1911 to house Alliance College.
The building burned to the ground in the winter of 1931. I was told that insufficient water pressure was a problem in fighting the fire, due to the hotel being located at the top of the hill. Someone told me that the fire was so bright that one could read a newspaper by it from blocks away. I was also told that students saved their clothes and bedding but priceless items from Poland perished in the flames. Alliance College rebuilt its campus on the site and operated there until it closed in 1987. The buildings now house a correctional facility for women.

But here are the results for the early tournament featuring many or even most top players in the world
 
Marshall, Frank James 13.0
Janowski, Dawid Markelowicz 11.0
Lasker, Emanuel 11.0
Marco, Georg 9.0
Showalter, Jackson Whipps 8.5
Schlechter, Carl 7.5
Chigorin, Mikhail 7.5
Pillsbury, Harry Nelson 7.0
Mieses, Jacques 7.0
Teichmann, Richard 6.5
Fox, Albert Whiting 6.5
Lawrence, Thomas Francis 5.5
Napier, William Ewart 5.5
Barry, John Finan 5.0
Hodges, Albert Beauregar5.0
 Delmar, Eugene 4.5

1988 - Cambridge Springs, Pennsylvania 
     This was the site of Frank Marshall's greatest triumph, 84 years before. This tournament turned out to be the closest U.S. championships ever when only two and half points separated first from last and no one was undefeated. 
     The venue was a large hotel that was really showing its age. Peeling paint and all.
     Lev Alburt and Sergey Kudrin figured in exactly half of the decisive game though. So how did they do? They finished near the bottom! 

1. Wilder 6.5 
2.-3. Seirawan 6.0 
2-3. Gulko 6.0 
4-10. Benjamin 5.5 
4-10. Rohde 5.5 
4-10. deFirmian 5.5 
4-10. Frias 5.5 
4-10. Fedorowicz 5.5 
4-10. Dlugy 5.5 
4-10. Kudrin 5.5 
 11. Alburt 5.0 
12. Miles 4.0 

     The real surprise was 26-year-old Michael Wilder who had been living in Paris as a professional player but had decided to return to school and study law when his late invitation to Cambridge Springs arrived. GM Tony Miles was playing because he had had some sort of a dispute with the British Chess Federation and had changed federations. His last place finish was disappointing. 
     Highlights of this event for me were: Before the start of the tournament I was hanging around in the lobby, met and had a brief chat with veteran master Ivan Romanenko who passed away in Greenville, Pennsylvania in November 1994 at age 77. 
     The biggest thrill was being the only spectator at the postmortem analysis of the Wilder vs. Miles game (drawn). I kept my mouth shut and just watched and listened. Miles was a character and Wilder seemed a little overawed by him. One interesting observation was that the younger players, after their games were finished, hit the hotel bar. All-in-all, this was probably the least enjoyable of the three championships I witnessed. — Tartajubov

More on this in a subsequent message

Phil Innes

....Hitting the same hotel bar I laterally encountered the very same barmaid, barpersonesse? in the now 'rustic' hotel, in the small downtown where half the shops were closed or seemed to be uninhabited for a few years — this after once being a spa-town attracting NY City summer migrants in another age — and presumably v. cheap to the USCF, with a few photos of the 2nd event on the wall, no captions, this person who served them and must then have been same age as Miles, and who remembered them differently — the chess players took to the pool table but also to singing, and Miles, she said, had a lovely English baritone tenor ;)

I have a few other anecdotes which will get to later, including the historical archive, thence to the Cambridge Springs itself as written of by Horowitz..

Phil Ynez