Red Garter Bed and Bakery

When the Red Garter went up in 1897, Williams was a young railroad town, and buildings like it served the men who worked the rails and the surrounding ranches and forests. In its early decades the building housed a saloon on the ground floor and rented rooms upstairs, in the part of town where saloons, gambling, and vice clustered near the tracks. It was, in short, a working building in a rough-and-ready frontier town.

As the years passed and the town changed, the building fell out of that use and, like many old commercial structures, could easily have been lost. Instead it was eventually restored, its brick, woodwork, and upstairs rooms brought back and reimagined as a place to welcome travelers rather than to work the trade of its youth.

Williams grew up as a stop on the railroad, and its fortunes were tied to the trains from the start. When a branch line was built north to the Grand Canyon, Williams became a gateway for tourists heading to the great chasm, a role it still plays through the revived Grand Canyon Railway that carries visitors up to the rim.

Later, Route 66 ran right through town, and Williams holds a special place in that story as one of the last towns on the route to be bypassed by the interstate. That history is written all over the main street, in the neon, the diners, and the brick storefronts, and it gives the town a nostalgic, well-preserved feel that pairs naturally with a stay in a restored old building like the Red Garter.

What sets the Red Garter apart from a plain historic hotel is the bakery on the ground floor. Guests staying upstairs wake to the aromas of baking drifting up, and fresh pastries and coffee are part of the experience. It is a small, personal kind of hospitality, closer to staying in a beloved old house than checking into a chain.

The guest rooms upstairs keep the building's period character, with the kind of quirks and stories that come with a structure well over a century old. For travelers who would rather sleep inside a piece of history than beside a highway, the combination of an authentic old building, a warm bakery, and a walkable town is the appeal.

Williams sits high in the ponderosa pine country at the base of Bill Williams Mountain, so its climate is far cooler than the deserts to the south. The town makes a comfortable, scenic base for exploring the forests, small lakes, and back roads of the surrounding Kaibab National Forest, as well as the Grand Canyon to the north.

Summer days are pleasant and the town is busiest, full of Grand Canyon travelers. Fall brings crisp air and golden aspen in the high country. Winter can be genuinely snowy at this elevation, giving the town and its Route 66 neon a wintry glow, and spring is cool and quiet as the pines shake off the snow.

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