How the West Was Won

The most successful hotels of the American West lean into their location, offering you authentic adventures in the wild or the chance to sit silently, looking out upon an endless landscape.

How the West Was Won was a 1962 film that had five chapters, three directors, and 24 movie stars, including Gregory Peck, Debbie Reynolds, and Jimmy Stewart. It was filmed using three cameras and shown using three projectors, all side by side by side, a panoramic process called Cinerama. It received eight Oscar nominations, and won three.

It’s an epic film for an epic subject: frontier times in the American West. We’ve written passionately about it before (like here and here). But a big, brash, star-soaked spectacle isn’t what I think of when I think of the Old West. For me, the piece of cinema that most immediately comes to mind is the tense opening sequence of Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West, where silence and stillness rule the day.

The creaking of a rusty windmill. The swinging of a loose shutter. A scurrying animal. Waves of tall grass. That’s “the west” to me. Enormous spaces, hard-baked by the sun, and quiet. Only the sound of the wind, occasionally interrupted by small noises you’d normally never notice. It’s relaxing. Although for a city slicker like myself all that silence can be unnerving. But mostly it’s relaxing.

What we have in the hotels below, scattered throughout America’s Mountain West region, is both the potential for extreme relaxation and the ability to instigate awesome adventure. It’s your choice. Laze in the tranquility of a hot spring, hot stone, or hot steam. Or, head out into the hills for hiking, skiing, riding, and wrangling. This is the west, whichever version you prefer.
 

Sage Lodge

Pray, MT, USA

Not far from Yellowstone National Park’s northern entrance is where you’ll find Sage Lodge, along the banks of the Yellowstone River in the aptly named Paradise Valley. The style is modern-rustic and the comforts are as plush as the landscape is rugged; there’s no end of opportunity for outdoor adventure, plus a luxe spa and a pair of restaurants serving menus centered around meats and produce sourced from local ranches and farms.

Brush Creek Ranch

Saratoga, WY, USA

The Rocky Mountain luxury ranch experience doesn’t get much more luxurious than this. The all-inclusive Brush Creek Ranch stands on some 30,000 acres in south-central Wyoming. The range of experiences on offer is a broad one, from tending the ranch’s goats to indulging in a spa treatment or even skiing the ranch’s private slopes. A variety of rooms, suites, and cabins see the homestead’s original buildings transformed into luxury lodgings.

Inn of The Five Graces

Santa Fe, NM, USA

It’s hard to say what’s more notable about the Inn of the Five Graces — the one-of-a-kind setting in a series of restored adobe houses in Santa Fe’s Barrio de Analco, considered the oldest neighborhood in the United States, or the museum-worthy art collection the designer owners acquired over a lifetime of world travels. Rooms feature rustic exposed beams, artisan-crafted textiles, wood-burning fireplaces, and bathrooms lined in colorful mosaic.

Montage Big Sky

Big Sky, MT, USA

The name Montage Big Sky more or less tells the story — the Californian purveyor of lavish high-design resort experiences meets the rugged Rocky Mountain wilderness of southwestern Montana. The 139 rooms and suites are matched with a 10,000-square-foot spa, an 18-hole golf course, and ski-in/ski-out access to the lift system at Big Sky Resort. There’s also a tubing hill, an ice rink, bike, horse, and Nordic trails, and a fly-fishing outfitter.

The Ritz-Carlton, Bachelor Gulch

Avon, CO, USA

In the timber-and-stone exteriors of Ritz-Carlton, Bachelor Gulch you’ll find echoes of national park lodges and Alpine inns; inside, however, the work of the Mexico City-based designer Simon Hamui is everywhere evident, melding classic luxury with contemporary style. In addition to the ski concierge service, there’s a 21,000-square-foot spa, heated outdoor pool, and access to all manner of outdoor sports, from snowshoeing to fly-fishing to golf.

Canyon Ranch Tucson

Tucson, AZ, USA

Founder Mel Zuckerman opened Canyon Ranch Tucson at the tail end of the seventies, seeking to replace the somewhat punitive approach of the health spas of the day with something more positive, more empowering, and more spiritually transformative. Long story short, it worked, and for decades travelers have made the pilgrimage to this site, just outside of Tucson, to chill out, to work out, to dry out, or some combination of the three.

The Green O at Paws Up Montana

Greenough, MT, USA

The resort complex at Paws Up Montana comprises an impressive variety of luxury ranch homes, safari-style tents, and cabins. This includes the Green O, a dozen secluded, architecturally daring houses. As for activities, there’s just about anything you can imagine doing in the mountains: fly-fishing, mountain biking, dog sledding, river rafting. It’s a spa resort for guys who are too tough for spa resorts. A wilderness camp for those who demand luxury-hotel comforts.

El Portal

Sedona, AZ, USA

One of Sedona’s real gems could be the smallest; El Portal is more a guest house than a hotel, much less a massive resort, like so many of its neighbors. It’s only more impressive for this fact, an intimate twelve-room hotel that shows a fastidious attention to detail, a meticulous Arts and Crafts replica, with antique-reproduction doors handmade by the owner and antique furnishings and fittings everywhere.

Enchantment

Sedona, AZ, USA

Boynton Canyon, part of the Yavapai Tribe’s ancestral land, is one of the famous Sedona vortexes — swirling centers of energy associated with healing. Enchantment Resort delivers on both inspiration and relaxation, from the dramatic pool scene with surrounding red rock formations reflected in its aquamarine water, to the cozy casitas and hacienda suites, built with adobe and outfitted in modern southwestern décor.

Caldera House

Teton Village, WY, USA

The exterior is just traditional enough to blend harmoniously with its Teton Village surroundings, with its peaked rooflines and its façade in stone and Douglas fir. It’s in the interiors, however, free from the prying eye of the town’s design board, that Caldera House is at its most impressive, turning the rustic textures of wood, stone, and leather into something refined, contemporary, and faultlessly stylish.

As for the comforts, the suites are outfitted to the latest five-star standard, and then some. In fact Caldera House’s residential units outnumber its hotel suites — though the latter are by no means second-class. Services go beyond what you’d expect from a small hotel or a condo development — this is a full-on “alpine club,” complete with a members’ lounge (to which hotel guests have full access), expansive spa and fitness facilities, and a gear shop offering rentals, fittings, and equipment for sale (handy, as the lift is literally right next door).

Alpine Falls Ranch

Superior, MT, USA

Alpine Falls Ranch takes the classic mountain-lodge aesthetic that its name implies and simply executes it with commitment, with verve, and with a rare tastefulness. The landscape, after all, is the real star of this show, and the best approach a hotel can take is to complement it rather than distract from it. It’s a four-season destination, fit for skiing, fishing, biking, hiking, horseback riding, and on and on.

Hotel Willa

Taos, NM, USA

Just outside the center of Taos’s historic district, Hotel Willa transforms a 1960s adobe motor lodge into a design-driven retreat with a strong local point of view. Original adobe walls and viga ceilings remain, while rooms feature handwoven textiles, local ceramics, and vintage radios tuned to the town’s KNCE. A partnership with the Paseo Project brings in rotating exhibitions and an artist-in-residence program.

Rusty Parrot Lodge and Spa

Jackson, WY, USA

The Rusty Parrot is a longtime Jackson Hole institution, and in its newest incarnation as the Rusty Parrot Lodge & Spa it’s the sort of unpretentiously upscale luxury boutique hotel that the destination demands. It’s still family-owned and -operated, and the service is as personal as ever. But the interiors now blend Rocky Mountain ruggedness with crisp contemporary style, and rooms add high-end comforts like soaking tubs and custom-made Italian linens.

Ofland Escalante

Escalante, UT, USA

Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument is a significant site for geologists, paleontologists, and outdoor enthusiasts; and while scientists are no doubt welcome, it’s to this latter group that Yonder Escalante is pitched. Here, on 22 acres of land just outside the town of Escalante, stand a collection of compact cabins and Airstream trailers, as well as a swimming pool, a bath house, and a central lodge featuring a lounge and general store. There’s even a drive-in cinema.

Gateway Canyons Resort

Gateway, CO, USA

From Gateway Canyons you won’t be making quick day trips to Denver or Colorado’s major ski resorts. And that’s the point. Here in canyon country you’re much closer to Utah’s mountain-biking and off-roading mecca of Moab than to Aspen or Vail. And, most importantly, you’re immersed in a landscape with plenty to offer locally, from fly fishing to river rafting, from hiking to biking to an all-world equestrian center and classic car museum.