Overview

Lured by the promise of land and opportunity, miners, cowhands, laborers, settlers and fortune-seekers poured into Colorado during the mid-to-late 19th Century and into the 20th. To accommodate the population boom, industrious Coloradoans built scores of hotels some elaborate, some modest, all a touchstone to this critical era in Centennial State history. Join Alexandra Walker Clark on this tour through Colorado's historic hotels. Discover how the Oxford and Brown Palace Hotels have managed to maintain their elegance, while others such as the Timberline Hotel of Holy Cross City and the California Hotel of Independence have vanished. With timeless recipes from hotel kitchens, learn how hotels have adapted to eras like the Native American desertion and the Roaring Twenties.

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9781609493011

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Born a native Tennessean, Alexandra Walker Clark grew up in Colorado. As an adult, she returned to her adopted home state and worked as a reporter for Denver newspapers. Childhood hikes through mountains and canyons with her father, a photographer, left such indelible memories that its vast, sweeping plains and iconic mountains still remain Clark's spiritual home. In the late 1950s, Clark's grandfather, Tennessee naturalist and author Robert Sparks Walker, traveled west to visit his family, and sought out the widowed Mrs. Enos Mills in Estes Park. A small child at the time, Clark still remembers that meeting of two great minds sharing like-minded philosophy and love of nature as they stood in the strong Colorado sun, reminiscing about Enos Mills beneath the majesty of his beloved Long's Peak. Clark, an avid traveler, is a lover of historic architecture and seeks to stay in old hotels. She and her husband owned three bed-and-breakfasts while raising a family. Sometimes their small children were rushed to the attic so their rooms could be rented for the night. Such recollections colored research of the lesser hotels, providing insight into rustic innkeeping in Colorado's early days. Some of these rough buildings, purporting to be hotels over a century ago, would be laughed at today. But there were also fantastic, extravagant structures that must have seemed like castles in the wilderness. While it is sad to realize how many of the grand hotels have perished, those that survive are treasures to be preserved for future generations.

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