La Posada Hotel in Winslow brings back the golden age of Southwest travel

The railroad is mostly for huge metal crates anymore, and Route 66 across Northeastern Arizona is strewn with abandoned motorcourts and kitsch approximations of the Mother Road’s golden age.  Interstate 40’s nonstop mania does little to convince us that this region was once a deliberate stop for discerning tourists.

But then we arrived in Winslow, heretofore known to us for its brief appearance in an Eagle’s hit from the 1970s (a fact the town still celebrates, in lieu of much else), and pulled into the parking lot of the La Posada Hotel, the capstone to Mary Colter’s career as the preeminent architect and designer of the American Southwest.

Now owned by Winslow Mayor Allen Affeldt and his wife, the brilliant painter Tina Mion (whose strange, wondrous paintings fill the arched hallways of the hotel), the La Posada has been beautifully restored and is now a reminder of the days when traveling to Indian Country was a chic journey to the American outback taken by the rich and famous and anybody else who could afford it.

This was largely the result of the genius of Fred Harvey, the so-called “civilizer of the West.”  He and his “Harvey Girls” made a trip to the barren, undeveloped High Desert an experience quite beyond merely comfortable, offering fine dining and fresh, gourmet food prepared by European chefs on Sante Fe dining cars.  Later, using Colter’s talents, Harvey built some of the nation’s finest hotels in some of the nation’s most out-of-the-way small towns, so that passengers on the popular Los Angeles to Chicago line would be able to live well even when stopping in Needles, Calif. 

The crowning achievement of this partnership came in 1930 with the construction of the La Posada, The Resting Place, at Winslow, the headquarters of the Sante Fe Railroad and the gateway to Indian Country.  Howard Hughes, Sinatra, Einstein, Bob Hope and the Crown Prince of Japan all stayed in Colter’s masterpiece, along with many other luminaries of American and world culture, hopping off the train right outside the hotel and then taking automobile “detours” to the Hopi Mesas and Navajoland, and then returning to the comfort of the Spanish Hacienda-inspired hotel and supreme comfort in a land that knew little of that gift.

Eventually train travel fell off, and Route 66 gave way to the Interstate, and not long after that everything was the same, and the Interstate Territory became the province of chain hotels and those restroom machines that blow hot air on your hands.  The La Posada closed in the 1950s, and sat disused until a few years ago when Affeldt and Mion saved it. 

It was refreshing to get out of that chain-world and stay at a hotel for its own sake, not just because we needed a place to crash until we got driving again.  I was assigned the room named for Isabella Greenway, a hotelier herself and the first female representative to Congress from Arizona; my sister and mother, with my sister’s baby and toddler, occupied the room next door named for the great Lionel Barrymore, also a past guest. 

At first I was worried that a three-year-old boy wouldn’t be exactly welcome in such a well-appointed atmosphere, but, as the hotel’s brochure says “well-behaved children and pets are welcome;”  they had to make a slight exception to their policy for my nephew.  The little fan of Thomas the Train Engine had to be coaxed away from the sitting area set up just outside the hotel’s sprawling back garden, right beside the right of way.   Trains still pass often, and the engineer will wave back and blow his whistle if you wave to him first. 

The independently operated Turquoise Room just off La Posada’s main lobby serves “Fred Harvey inspired” meals like prime rib and steak, and a wild blend of gourmet dishes under the heading “Native American-inspired nouvelle cuisine.”  Interesting, creative, and delicious is what that means, I think.  I had the prime rib and chocolate soufflé with orange liquor and went to bed wishing I was traveling the territory on the old Sante Fe Chief instead of in my compact car.  A wanderer could get used to this kind of life.

The Details:

For all its beauty and Fred Harvey-like attention to detail, the La Posada is actually quite affordable.  Reservations are a must, and expect to spend as much at the Turquoise Room for dinner as you do on your room.   The La Posada is at 303 E. 2nd Street, Route 66, Winslow, Ariz.  Call 928-289-4366 for reservations, or check out www.laposada.org.

Originally published in the Sahuarita Sun