The Painted Desert Inn is celebrating its 100th year this month, though it started under another name and was in danger of being torn down during the mid-1970s.
To celebrate the centennial, the surrounding Petrified Forest National Park in eastern Arizona will offer free activities for families on June 21-23 along with moonlight-guided tours of the park. More information about the events is here.
KPNX-TV in Phoenix published a good story about the site. Some highlights:
- Herbert David Lore built the inn in 1924 and named it the Stone Tree House, mostly because much of its construction materials came from petrified wood and sandstone in the area.
- The Stone Inn offered rooms for $2 a night and hot meals. Lore also offered two-hour tours of the surrounding painted desert.
- The National Park Service in 1936 paid Lore $59,400 — $1.3 million in today’s dollars — for the inn and four square miles of land.
- The Civilian Conservation Corps revamped the building into its current Pueblo Revival style.
- The inn closed in 1963. The park’s superintendent received an order in 1975 to tear down the Painted Desert Inn. But the superintendent reportedly said he couldn’t do it because it was too historically valuable.
One thing that the article doesn’t mention is the Painted Desert Inn came under the management of the Fred Harvey Company during the late 1940s.
The Painted Desert Inn is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The skylights, chandeliers and murals by Hopi painter Fred Kabotie are still there. The Painted Desert Inn no longer takes overnight guests, nor does it serve meals.
But it does offer ice cream to visitors who have trekked or are about to explore the Petrified Forest National Park. And it’s an amazing place to walk through.
(Image of the Painted Desert Inn via the National Park Service)