Heritage Hotels : Time Stands Still at Four Historic Arizona Hotels Rife With Amusing Quirks and Characters of the Old West

History lies close to the surface in this young state, bristling with heady tales waiting to snag your imagination. Take, for example, a nick in the grand marble staircase of the Gadsden Hotel. Courtesy of Pancho Villa, say the locals. The bad-boy revolutionary rode his horse up the stairway during a gun battle, and the horseshoes chipped the marble.

Well, maybe. There’s a problem. Villa died in 1923. Five years later, fire ravaged the Gadsden, and it was rebuilt to the original 1907 plans. It’s possible, hotel owner Hartman Brekhus tells me, that the original stairs were salvaged and recycled. It’s also possible that the story is wishful fantasy, concocted long ago to feed the swirl of notoriety around this old hotel.

One thing’s for sure: The Gadsden’s lobby is fantasy, a capsule of gilded Renaissance Spain drawn through the style of Chicago’s Louis Sullivan and magically beamed into this dusty border town of 13,000 people. It is two generous stories high; the $10,000 (in 1929) gold-leaf ceiling is supported by enormous marble columns, and the stained-glass window welcoming the winter sun is a Tiffany. The room’s entire color spectrum is amber to gold, and just sitting in it feels like lounging in the den of a pirate who had a classical education. It’s the most spectacular enclosed space in Arizona, better than any church, better than any $300-a-night Scottsdale resort (a night at the Gadsden can be as cheap as $30). There isn’t much else to do in Douglas, but gaping at this architecture and eavesdropping on the tales of the crusty old guys who congregate in the lobby is enough.

I cherish hotels like this. As someone who travels more than 5,000 miles a year within Arizona researching stories, whenever possible I’ll pick a place like the Gadsden. Steeped in history, these hotels are infinitely more likely to harbor amusing quirks and characters than a nice, modern, antiseptic chain motel, where the local atmosphere is a bad print of Monument Valley over the bed.

Because of Arizona’s youth (statehood arrived in 1912), there are fewer than a dozen hotels on the National Register of Historic Places, all built between 1900 and 1930. Some, such as Prescott’s Hotel Vendome, are refurbished miners’ boarding houses; some, such as Tucson’s Hotel Congress, used to be--how to put this nicely?--rather more prominent than they are today. The four that are unquestionably worth a stay are theGadsden, Bisbee’s Copper Queen, Prescott’s Hassayampa Inn and the Grand Canyon’s El Tovar.

THE GADSDEN

Douglas

The Gadsden, 10 blocks from the Mexican border on one of Douglas’ main commercial streets, holds as much history as the others combined. It doesn’t even need the dubious Pancho Villa story.

Cowboy movie idol Tom Mix spent the night of Oct. 11, 1940, here, and, they say, drank too much. It was his last night on earth. The next day, screaming up U.S. 89 between Tucson and Phoenix, he plowed his yellow Cord into an arroyo. The Gadsden’s retired bartender, who still haunts the lobby to swap stories with old friends, told me about the time Casey Stengel swaggered in for a drink; he’d just killed a mountain lion. In “The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean,” Paul Newman struts down the Gadsden’s stairs.

But the Gadsden’s most interesting character doesn’t have a famous name, nor, apparently, a name at all. Numerous long-time employees--people tend to stay with the Gadsden for decades, even through its frequent changes of ownership--claim that a ghost stalks the basement. I figured it was another conspiracy to whip up helpful publicity, but during my visit in November I asked Carmen Diaz--for 20 years the operator of the hotel’s original 1907 elevator--to take me down. On the way, I asked about the ghost.

Suddenly her eyes brimmed with fear, and I knew that whatever she saw, she wasn’t making up. She’s seen him twice, she said. “He was in a black suit, shiny shoes; he looked very nice,” she said. “But . . .” She cranked the elevator door open to the basement. “But he had no head.”

The Gadsden’s basement is a gloomy labyrinth of shadowy corridors, storage rooms and creaky boilers and pipes. During my guided tour with co-owner Doris Brekhus, I failed to see the ghost. But I wouldn’t be down here at night alone.

I’d rather contemplate the more artistic ghost in the lobby: Henry Trost. Trost is the architect who designed most of the best buildings in Arizona, New Mexico and West Texas in the first three decades of this century.

He never created a signature style, but glided easily among Mission Revival, Pueblo Deco, the Prairie Style and even Bhutanese Revival, sometimes mixing ‘n’ matching, always bringing it off with taste and panache. The rebuilt Gadsden’s plain exterior doesn’t carry much of Trost’s original Sullivanesque tracery, but the 1928 lobby, judging from photos, was faithfully rebuilt. Sullivan was the American master of fin de siecle decoration, ornamenting his buildings inside and out in intricate filagree. While Trost shamelessly copied Sullivan’s famous terra-cotta ovoids, in the Gadsden he cleverly swaddled them in abstracted cacti.

The Gadsden’s 145 rooms are reasonably comfortable but spare, and in varying states of renovation, frankly. Some have the original tile-inlaid Trost furniture. If you’re in a splurge mood, ask for the spacious and pleasant $85 Governor’s Suite. Eleanor Roosevelt slept here.

COPPER QUEEN

Bisbee

The Tucson Citizen called Bisbee, 23 miles northwest of Douglas, “the busiest burg in the (Arizona) Territory” and “the city of” foul odors and sickening smells . . . (its streets) covered with a slime several inches deep and about four feet wide.” Fortuntely, this was 90 years ago, and the Citizen was feeling cranky because Bisbee, sitting on a fabulous copper vein, had eclipsed Tucson as the focus of action in the Territory.

Bisbee was a company town from its 1880 founding, and it was the Copper Queen Mining Co. that commissioned the Copper Queen Hotel in 1902. There seem to be no documents explaining why such an expensive, carefully detailed Italianate Victorian hotel would be needed in a rough, dirty mining town, but I’ve poked around enough Arizona history to guess: The company cigars needed to dress Bisbee in a veneer of civilization to convince investors that the place was for real.

And there was cash to burn in early 1900s Bisbee. The Italianate, Romanesque and Art Deco buildings clinging improbably to the sides of the huge gulch that cradles the town illustrate both Bisbee’s past wealth and determination.

The hotel was designed by Van Vleck & Goldsmith of New York. Unlike Trost, who lavished most of his client’s money on the inside, the New York architects gave the Copper Queen a perfunctory lobby but made the building the commanding landmark of Bisbee. Looking down on it from U.S. 80, which curls up the south side of the gulch, it seems to rise out of the dense jumble of downtown buildings like a tripartite pagoda, stoic and timeless and vaguely Asian in mood, but essentially Italian Renaissance in its form and detailing. If this sounds odd, well, that just makes it at home in modern Bisbee.

A simplified city history:

The mining era thudded to an end in 1975. Unemployed miners streamed out of town, and rundown cottages tumbled onto the market for as little as $800. Artists and assorted bohemians flooded in, and a period of tension between newcomers and old-timers, now remembered as the “hippie era,” inevitably followed. Eventually most of the hippies turned 40, started businesses and voted for Reagan.

Bisbee, population 6,288 (down from a boom-town peak of about 15,000), is sheer delight to visit today. It’s Aspen turned inside-out, kicked into a time warp and trapped in a cheerful reverse universe without traffic lights, designer labels or pretentious boutiques.

It’s at its best during one of its frequent annual events such as October’s Fiesta de Vinos, which is much more giant block party than serious wine festival (they pour tall Chardonnays, and few tasters swirl and spit), or April’s La Vuelta de Bisbee, the hair-raising professional bicycle race through the town’s insanely sloping streets.

But Bisbee can be fun at any time because of its characters. Rob Joseph, a potter working in a downtown gallery, gave me the best line on the town I’ve heard in 20 years of visits: “A lot of people here have done the mainstream thing, and they come here and take their shoes off and never put them back on,” he said. “You literally find nuclear physicists living in their cars. There really was one a few years ago; I think he died of carbon monoxide poisoning.”

There are about 200 working artists in Bisbee, although most of them show elsewhere--you can buy New Age Mystical Oils with which to anoint yourself, but not serious art. But roam the narrow, serpentine streets and you’ll always find something engaging. Under a full moon, I encountered a three-foot-high humanoid sculpture made of hinges, springs, bolts, flanges and gears standing on someone’s porch: a contemporary Bisbee gargoyle.

The Copper Queen’s $60-to-$90 rooms are embellished with floral Victorian wallpaper, fitted with modern baths and, while compact, have 10-foot ceilings. The very pretty dining room has served consistently mediocre food throughout the hotel’s last several ownerships. For dinner, walk three blocks west to The Wine Gallery (41 Main St.; 602-432-3447). Owner-chef Rod Kass, former sous-chef at the Registry Resort in Scottsdale, serves up creative nouvelle pasta dishes unimaginable in the Bisbee of years past.

HASSAYAMPA INN

Prescott

In 1964, U.S. Sen. Barry Goldwater launched his presidential campaign on the steps of the Yavapai County Courthouse in Prescott, the same place he had chosen for his opening shots in two successful Senate races. This north-central Arizona site was the perfect stage set for his message of conservative American values. The neoclassical-revival courthouse thunders a message of moral order and magisterial authority. In the neighborhoods surrounding it, Victorian houses--a rarity in Arizona--illustrate the boundless self-confidence of late 19th-Century America. In mile-high Prescott’s cool evenings, residents still sit on these front porches and wave to neighbors and passing strangers.

A block east of the courthouse is my favorite old Arizona hotel, the Hassayampa Inn, designed in 1927 by--once again--Henry Trost. The architect was nearing the twilight of his career here (he died in 1933), and his work had become less self-consciously decorative. Outside, the Hassayampa is muted Spanish Colonial Revival. Inside is little of the Gadsden’s opulence, but a lobby that could be the living room of a very rich don who understood that comfort and good taste make the best impression of all.

Look up and you’ll see the best ceiling in Arizona: a painted commotion of interlocking curlicues, abstract Frank Lloyd Wrightian geometry, starbursts, starfish, kachina masks and profiles of noble Indians.

Like a number of important Prescott buildings, the Hassayampa barely made it through the neglectful ‘60s and ‘70s. It began going to seed, changed hands several times and even became, briefly, apartments for retirees. In 1986, it underwent a restoration so thorough that it bankrupted the owner, and it tumbled ignominiously into the hands of the Resolution Trust Corp. Now owners Bill and Georgia Teich seem to have installed very professional management, and the Hassayampa, after losing money for 20 consecutive years, is on the verge of breaking even.

What does this mean to the visitor? I stumbled into the lobby with an overload of luggage and camera gear, and white-haired bellman Bob Flack surged to my rescue. He expertly piloted the 1927 elevator to the second floor, then offered to fetch a pitcher of ice from the kitchen (the Hassayampa has no ice machines). His manner was so gracious, so professional, I assumed he’d been a bellman all his life.

“No, this is my second day,” he said. “I retired here a year ago and was looking for a part-time job to keep busy. I was a sales rep for Certified Grocers in L.A.” I suspect he was a good one.

The $80-$110 rooms were lovely, some decorated with commissioned watercolors of Prescott’s Victorian buildings, others with the original 1927 furniture. For anyone not interested in exploring Victorian Prescott, there’s cable TV from Phoenix.

The transformation of the Hassayampa’s Peacock Room has also been dramatic. In past visits, it seemed as if the kitchen’s highest aspiration was to not overcook the Steak Diane. This time I was presented with red mountain trout swaddled in delicately sauteed spinach with prosciutto and onion. It was terrific.

Two other downtown restaurants in Prescott offer serious competition: Murphy’s (201 N. Cortez; 602-445-4044), a seafood house in a restored 1890 mercantile building, and the unlikely Nolaz (220 W. Gurley; 602-445-3765), which offers inexpensive New Orleans cuisine.

Today, Barry Goldwater might be surprised by Prescott’s sophistication, but he wouldn’t be disappointed.

EL TOVAR

Grand Canyon

On the South Rim, the crush of people (4 million a year), buzzing helicopters, rubber tomahawk shops and IMAX theater now conspire to make it a Disneyland experience and to diminish the Grand Canyon’s awesome natural spectacle.

The much quieter North Rim, as Conde Nast Traveler magazine observed last year, “has long been the connoisseur’s side of the canyon.”

There’s still a connoisseur’s way to experience the South Rim. It costs a hundred bucks a night, minimum, and unless you’re lucky (ask about cancellations; it sometimes works) requires reservations six to 12 months in advance. It’s also worth it. El Tovar is the grand lodge of the Grand Canyon, and once ensconsed there, it’s easy to ignore the burgeoning tackiness around.

El Tovar was designed in 1905 by Fred Harvey architect Charles Whittlesey. Legend is that Teddy Roosevelt leaned on developer Harvey to not goof up the Grand Canyon, and that Harvey passed on the word to his architect. Whittlesey succeeded, sort of. Despite its size--three stories and a wingspan of 327 feet--El Tovar appears remarkably modest: It doesn’t try to upstage the canyon.

But what does it try to do? A scholar of architecture, trying to parse the design, might eventually leap off the canyon rim (conveniently situated only 100 feet away) in terminal frustration. It’s a mess. Its mood is part Swiss hunting lodge, part Richardsonian Romanesque; its style part mongrel Victorian, part giant log cabin. Inexplicably, Whittlesey also managed to site it so that few rooms have much of a canyon view. (The four $222-a-night “view suites” have porches overlooking the canyon.)

In contrast to the mostly rustic accommodations elsewhere on the canyon rim, El Tovar’s rooms are lovely. They’re dark--the entire hotel has a dark ambience--but the beds are big and luxurious, the bathrooms are vast and the cable TV is a debatable blessing. Sure, it’s easy entertainment. But as you’re about to fall asleep on the lip of the Grand Canyon, it might be more meaningful to read in John Wesley Powell’s 1869 journal how:

. . . In my eagerness to reach a point where I can see the roaring fall below, I go too far on the wall, and can neither advance nor retreat. I stand with one foot on a little projecting rock, and cling with my hand fixed in a little crevice. Finding I am caught here, suspended 400 feet above the Colorado river, into which I should fall if my footing fails, I call for help....

El Tovar provides the most ambitious dining on either canyon rim. The menu is about as grand as you’re going to find in a lodge that’s 230 miles from the nearest city, but it carries that ol’ continental accent (“Broiled Tournedos of Veal with Lobster Bearnaise. Includes vegetable and choice of potato or rice. $25.”). Execution is OK, not great. You might be happier lugging in a cache of fruit, cheese and Freixenet and feasting on the rim at sunset. I have been.

In spite of its shortcomings, old El Tovar exudes an inexplicable allure, a kind of gruff elegance that illustrates 1905’s state of the art of bringing a bit of civilization to the wilderness.

GUIDEBOOK

Arizona’s Historic Hotels

Getting there: Douglas and Bisbee are 12 hours’ driving time from Los Angeles. Take Interstate 10 to Phoenix and spend the night there. Otherwise, fly into Tucson International Airport and rent a car. Bisbee is 100 miles southeast on U.S. 80; Douglas is another 22 miles beyond.

Prescott is a six-hour drive from Los Angeles. Take I-10 east and U.S. 60 northeast, or fly to Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. Prescott is a quick 90-minute drive north from central Phoenix.

Direct air service is available from Los Angeles to Grand Canyon Airport on America West and Delta. Round-trip fares start at $198.

Reservations and rates: Gadsden Hotel, 1046 G Ave., Douglas, Ariz. 85607, (602) 364-4481. Rates, $30 double, $85 suite.

Copper Queen Hotel, Drawer CQ, Bisbee 85603, (800) 247-5829 or (602) 432-2216. Rates, $63-$80 double, $90 suite.

Hassayampa Inn, 122 E. Gurley St., Prescott 86301, (800) 322-1927 or (602) 778-9434. Winter rates, $70-$80 double, $95 suite; summer, $85-$95 double, $110 suite. Rates include full breakfast in the Peacock Room and one cocktail.

El Tovar, Grand Canyon National Park Lodges, P.O. Box 699, Grand Canyon 86023, (602) 638-2401. Current year-round rates for two, $97-$222.

When to travel in Arizona is best determined by the elevation of the destination. Douglas (3,990 feet) is hot in summer (with cool nights and regular afternoon thunderstorms in July and August), mild in winter. Bisbee (5,490 feet) and Prescott (5,354 feet) are both excellent all-season destinations with little extreme weather. The South Rim (6,876 feet) is decidedly cold in winter, but the crowds are much thinner than in summer.

For more information: Contact the Douglas Chamber of Commerce, 1125 Pan American, Douglas, Ariz. 85607, (602) 364-2477. Bisbee Chamber of Commerce, P.O. Drawer BA, Bisbee 85603, (800) 551-9745 or (602) 432-5421. Prescott Chamber of Commerce, P.O. Box 1147, Prescott 86302, (602) 445-2000. Grand Canyon National Park, P.O. Box 699, Grand Canyon 86023, (602) 638-7888.