La Posada Hotel

Mary Colter was one of the few prominent women architects of her era, and she spent decades designing buildings for the Fred Harvey Company along the Santa Fe line, including several of the most beloved structures at the Grand Canyon. La Posada, meaning the resting place, was the project she cared for most and the one over which she had the greatest control, and she poured herself into every corner of it.

She conceived the hotel as the sprawling ranch home of a fictional Spanish don, complete with an invented family history that shaped the layout, the furnishings, and even where the wear and patina should fall. She chose the tiles, the ironwork, the gardens, and the art, aiming for a building that felt as though it had grown over generations rather than been built all at once, and the result is a place of unusual warmth and imagination.

La Posada was a Harvey House, part of the chain of hotels and restaurants the Fred Harvey Company ran along the Santa Fe Railway to feed and shelter travelers in an age before dining cars were common. The famous Harvey Girls, young women who served in crisp uniforms with a reputation for order and hospitality, staffed the dining room, and the hotel hosted movie stars, presidents, and ordinary passengers alike during its heyday.

The Santa Fe line still runs right past the front door, and freight trains rumble by around the clock, close enough to feel. That connection to the rails is central to the hotel's identity; it was built by and for the railroad, and its revival preserves a way of travel that shaped the whole Southwest, when the train was how you crossed this vast country.

After the hotel closed in 1957, the railroad stripped its interior and used the shell as division offices, and by the late twentieth century the building was slated for demolition. A group of preservationists and new owners stepped in, bought it, and began the enormous task of bringing it back, room by room, garden by garden, working from Colter's original vision and old photographs.

The restoration replanted the sunken gardens and orchards, reopened the long tiled halls, and filled the public rooms with art, much of it by one of the owners, a painter. The dining room reopened as a celebrated restaurant, and the hotel took in guests again. The revival of La Posada stands as proof of how much can be saved when a place is loved enough to fight for it.

The hotel anchors Winslow, a Route 66 railroad town on the high Colorado Plateau that saw hard times when the interstate bypassed it and the trains stopped stopping. Downtown a corner park marks the line from the Eagles song Take It Easy, and travelers come to stand on the corner, giving the small town a cheerful claim to fame.

The country around Winslow rewards exploring. The Painted Desert and Petrified Forest lie to the east, the ancient pueblo ruins of Homolovi State Park sit just north of town, and the Hopi mesas rise beyond, homeland of the Hopi people who have farmed this plateau for many centuries. La Posada makes a comfortable and characterful base for all of it.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.