One hundred years ago, hotels in Texas advertised 75-cent to $1 daily rooms (with special rates for families), cool breezes in summer months, proximity to streetcar lines, and, if you were flush with cash, perhaps even your own private bathroom. While their amenities have been upgraded significantly in the intervening years, many historic hotels still endure in Texas, with their creaky floors and old pipes, stately lobbies, and breezy, rocking chair–lined verandas—plus maybe a ghostly spirit or two that checked in and never checked out.
At least thirty hundred-year-old hotels are still operating across the state, enduring among their more cookie-cutter chain peers. Among these treasures are the oldest continuously operating hotel—the Excelsior House Hotel, in Jefferson—and four that celebrated their centennials just this year, including the Warwick Melrose, in Dallas. I have been curious about how these hundred-year-old hotels—alongside their similarly popular cousins, midcentury roadside motels—continue to charm travelers who are generations removed from their histories. Why eschew the predictable clean comforts and complimentary Texas-shaped waffles offered at your standard chain hotel in favor of elegant but aging historic lodging? “People like the story,” one hotel spokesperson told me. Here are a few of the more interesting stories these hotels contain within their walls.
The Hotel That Moved: The Fairmount Hotel
San Antonio
Moving the Fairmount Hotel, one of the heaviest buildings ever transported as a single unit, started with a blessing from the local Roman Catholic auxiliary bishop in San Antonio. Then came the thunder: 280 tons of steel crossbeams and 36 dollies with hydraulic jacks capable of lifting and moving a 3-million-pound brick hotel a half mile, from the intersection of Bowie and Commerce to its current location, near Hemisfair park and La Villita. The 1985 move made national headlines and earned a Guinness World Record. In the process of preparing the hotel for its move, excavators uncovered cannonballs, bayonets, and other items believed to be associated with Santa Anna’s army during the Battle of the Alamo.
“People like to stay somewhere that’s a little bit different,” says marketing manager Brandon Stevens. “They like to stay somewhere where they feel welcomed and engaged with. Some of these thousand-room hotels, they don’t have that sense of story.” At the Fairmount, which has been expanded since that initial move, each room is a little bit different in terms of square footage and layout, offering a stay that’s slightly new each time. Guests can also choose from three locally owned and operated restaurants at the hotel, including one with a rooftop terrace that overlooks Hemisfair park.
401 S. Alamo, San Antonio. 210-224-8800. Rates start at $199.
Let’s Fall in Love: The Driskill
Austin
A strong argument could be made that all Texas roads lead to the Driskill. So many key historical moments of the last century have roots at this grand 1886 hotel: the love story of LBJ and Lady Bird; the planning of the ambush of Bonnie and Clyde; the plan to save the Alamo by the Daughters of the Republic of Texas. The Driskill is inextricably linked with Austin and, arguably, the state of Texas.
It’s hard to believe such a historic treasure was almost demolished. In 1969, a wrecking ball was parked on the corner of Sixth and Brazos, ready to knock down the building within the day, but the Heritage Society of Austin, now Preservation Austin, stepped in to save it, says general manager Garrett Borden. Hosting a giant bake sale out of the hotel’s bakery and raising funds, Austin citizens paid off the mortgage and later secured the hotel’s addition to the National Register of Historic Places, preserving it for future generations.
No matter how many times Texans may have visited Austin or the Driskill, it’s still a tradition to grab afternoon tea or meet up with friends (and friendly strangers) at the hotel’s stately bar, where countless new relationships have formed over the past 138 years. “It’s a hotel of love stories,” says Borden. “People fall in love with each other, and they fall in love with the hotel.”
604 Brazos, Austin. 512-439-1234. Rates start at $159.
As the Swallow Flies: The Hotel Limpia
Fort Davis
The Hotel Limpia got its start in 1884, drawing West Texas ranchers in its early years. During the fifties and sixties, Texans from Houston and other southern cities would travel to Fort Davis, the state’s highest-elevation town, to escape the summer heat, earning them the nickname “summer swallows” (like the bird)—kind of reverse winter Texans, according to Hotel Limpia general manager Meagan Garza. A 1929 listing for summer resorts in the San Antonio Light mentions “recreation of various kinds, golf, horses to ride, auto trips, mountain climbing, swimming, etc.”
Nowadays, the hotel is organized into three buildings: the historic main building, built in 1912, with a stone facade and a double balcony with rocking chairs; the 1917 Orchard House; and the more modern Casa Limpia. The main building’s rooms are decorated in a Victorian motif, with dark wood headboards and brocade-style drapery. Guests can dine at the Blue Mountain Bar and Grill and grab a coffee at the Double Shot Coffee Lounge on their way through downtown Fort Davis. A recent surprise guest to the restaurant seemed particularly enthralled by hotel history, asking questions and poring over the historic newspaper articles lining the walls. Garza was excited to confirm that the incognito woman before her was none other than Miranda Lambert, following in the summer swallows’ footsteps.
101 Memorial Square, Fort Davis, 432-426-3237. Rates start at $100.
Meet Me Under the Dome: Hotel Paso del Norte
El Paso
Architect Henry Trost’s mark on historic West Texas hotels is notable, from the Spanish-influenced Mission Revival style of the Gage Hotel, in Marathon (1927), and the Hotel Paisano in Marfa (1930); to the Pueblo Revival style of the Hotel El Capitan in Van Horn (1930) and El Paso’s Plaza Hotel Pioneer Park (1930)—all predated by the grand Hotel Paso del Norte, built in 1912, which feels like a love letter the Ohio-born Trost left for his adopted city, where he died in 1933.
The 351-room hotel reopened in 2020 after an extensive renovation effort. Staying the night feels much like staying at other Marriott Autograph Collection hotels—the rooms offer the same types of high–thread count bedding, tufted headboards, and carpeting. The wallpaper is printed with an old El Paso street map.
But walking into the lobby bar, originally the hotel’s reception area, makes even a random Wednesday morning feel like an elegant occasion. There’s a sense of soaring conveyed by gilded arches, pink marble walls, and a Tiffany-esque blue-green stained-glass dome ceiling, handcrafted for the space. The building’s design is the height of opulence, incorporating pure white gypsum from New Mexico in the walls. U.S. and Mexican presidents, as well as such notable personalities as Amelia Earhart, Will Rogers, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Pancho Villa all visited this landmark in its heyday. “Even a century ago, there was that phrase people would throw around: ‘Meet me under the dome,’ ” says Adam Gautreaux, general manager.
10 Henry Trost Court, El Paso. 915-534-3000. Rates start at $189.
Of History and Hush Puppies: The Stagecoach Inn
Salado
Ask many old-timers, and they probably have stories involving Salado’s Stagecoach Inn. Engagement parties, receptions, and moonlit reveries at this 1860 stagecoach stop along the Chisholm Trail have all woven treasured memories for generations of Texans. Cole Di Carlo, director of sales and marketing at Alexa Management, the company that operates the hotel, recently hosted a menu tasting for locals and ran into one of these longtime fans. “He says, ‘You’re too young to know this, but being invited to dinner at the Stagecoach restaurant in Bell County [used to be] the equivalent of being invited to the Ritz in Paris. You dropped what you did.’ ”
Legends swirl around the Shady Villa Hotel, as the business was previously known (it changed its name back to Shady Villa in 2021, kept it for a few years, and now goes by the Stagecoach Inn again). The hotel is said to have been visited by Jesse James, Robert E. Lee, and Sam Houston, who allegedly gave a speech against Texas secession from the second-floor balcony. Locals have told tales of treasure buried in a cave underneath the hotel and of the healing waters on-site. “Salado is an Ideal Spot For a Health Resort,” ran a 1906 newspaper advertisement for Shady Villa, purporting the freshwater springs to offer “curative and health giving qualities.”
The hotel has undergone a number of renovations, but its current iteration embraces its midcentury identity, with wood-paneled walls, Saltillo tile floors, and an outdoor pool where you can imagine Jayne Mansfield curling up with a cocktail. But perhaps most exciting are the ongoing developments at the on-site restaurant, whose history has always been an important part of this property. Don’t miss the legendary hush puppies, made famous by former owner Ruth Van Bibber. Chef Rusty Winkstern (the Monument Cafe and El Monumento, both in Georgetown) has recently been tapped to give the menu a nip and tuck—including those hallowed hush puppies, which Di Carlo claims taste better than ever.
416 S. Main, Salado. 254-947-5111. Rates start at $103.
Built on the Scales of Fish Tales: The Tarpon Inn
Port Aransas
Spend an evening out on one of the Tarpon Inn’s double verandas, which are lined with rocking chairs, and feel the breezes off Aransas Bay the way guests have done for the past 138 years. The hotel’s original structure was built in 1886 with lumber from a Civil War barracks, and the Tarpon Inn has survived its share of storms, including a hurricane in 1919 that reduced the building and most of Port Aransas to sticks. “The famous Tarpon Inn is entirely gone,” read an article in the September 20, 1919, issue of the San Antonio Express. (The main building was destroyed, but the smaller building survived.) The story continued: “If the town is destroyed the spirit of the people is still alive.”
The inn was rebuilt in 1922 and fortified against future storms. The lobby still holds the evidence of a century of legendary “fish tales”: more than seven thousand silvery scales hammered to the wall with rusty nails. The scales are from tarpon—the fish that in 1896 gave the town its name (it was changed to Port Aransas around 1911). The most prized scale is signed by President Franklin Roosevelt, a souvenir of a 1937 fishing trip during which he stayed aboard the U.S.S. Potomac. “The only thing that he used the Tarpon for that we know of was to send a telegram to Hitler with his condolences over the Hindenburg disaster,” says owner Lee Roy Hoskins.
Inside, rooms are sparsely furnished, with exposed wood planks on the floors and walls. Hoskins has resisted modernization by choosing not to include televisions in the rooms and not to expand the hotel beyond its 24 rooms. He fully acknowledges that his hotel isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. “I think the people who want to go to the Hampton Inn or the Holiday Inn for a free breakfast probably don’t want to go here,” he says. “They’re two totally different things. I prefer it to be quaint, and I like the clientele that we have—they seem to want to support us just the way we do it.”
200 E. Cotter Avenue, Port Aransas. 361-749-5555. Rates start at $125.
