In old novels, single men always turn up in places like Durango – lonely salesman, only they are called “drummers,” clutching suitcases, only they are called “grips” or “carpetbags.” Nothing in them but a few extra shirt collars and a change of union suit. These are the guys who walked from the railroad station to the Rochester Hotel and holed up there selling widgets, drinking whiskey and, with any luck, taking up with some floozy.
Owner Diane Wildfang is a little less romantic in her imaginings. She thinks the hotel, built in 1892, might have indeed appealed to the average salesman at the turn of the century, while the grander Strater Hotel on Main Avenue hosted governors and dignitaries. But by the 1960s, she says, the Rochester would have been too lowbrow for anyone who wore a suit.
Love at first sight
“The owners rented it out to people on disability subsidies,” she recalls. Thirty-three years of this did the historic building no favors, but Wildfang still loved it at first sight.
“It was 1993, and the place was a flophouse,” she said. “Thirty-six rooms and two bathrooms, one on each floor. There aren’t exactly a lot of indigent people in Durango, but they all lived at the Rochester Hotel. It was in sad, sad shape. Still, I saw how beautiful its bones were, and my husband and I bought it.”
Not knowing anything about property restoration or hotel management, they struggled with historic-yet-cigarette-burned furniture, a garden full of beer cans, and those two lone bathrooms. They turned the place into a bed-and-breakfast, though she prefers to call it an inn or a boutique hotel.
“We don’t serve prissy little breakfasts, and we never say ‘Here’s a coupon, go get 25 cents off breakfast down the street.’ We have a gourmet, no-meat breakfast, and we make everything from scratch.”
Health on the side
It is even a touch on the healthful side – something I appreciate almost desperately when traveling. (Otherwise, I eat nothing but garbage, on the premise that I may never vacation, or eat half a pound of tourist-trap fudge, ever again.) Furthermore, the hotel rooms have an Edward Hopper feel, with vast bathrooms tiled hexagonally, white chenille bedspreads, and everything of the highest quality. It feels like the 1930s, if they had been luxuriously comfortable. Those vintage bathrooms are, of course, brand new.
All this is beside the point once you get out into the hallways, which are lined with movie posters framed in backstage-dressing-room light bulbs. The posters advertise almost nothing but old-time Westerns, all made in Durango, using Durango extras, and usually starring the Durango-Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad.
Diane’s husband, Frederic, is obsessed with what he calls Hollywood of the Rockies. I can see why. If you saw these pictures as a kid, they stay with you for life, even if you grew up in Long Island and saw them in the drive-in about as far east of a cattle range as it is possible to get.
I was on my way to breakfast when I spied the poster for “How the West Was Won,” starring an absolute cavalcade of name actors: John Wayne, Debbie Reynolds, Karl Malden,
Gregory Peck and (who knew?) Harry Morgan, who later become Col. Potter on “M*A*S*H.” I spent at least an hour viewing the rest of the gallery and reading the accompanying text provided by Mr. Wildfang, who uses wonderful words like “horse opera.”
Durango’s golden age
The golden age of Durango cinema seems to have been between 1949 and about 1991, the year of “City Slickers.” During the filming of “A Ticket to Tomahawk,” a tribe of Navajo extras refused to fall off their horses until they learned they were portraying Apaches. Marilyn Monroe, participating in a town softball game, arranged to have her jeans fall down around her ankles while sliding into second. Clark Gable came to town for “Across the Wide Missouri.” His wife barely tolerated the scraggly beard he had to grow for the part. And what is a Western without a bandito getting thrown from a speeding train into a canyon? Directors always used a dummy, but once, the sheriff’s department was fooled into investigating.
Et fabulous cetera.
I have always liked the adverb “clint-eastwoodly,” even if I had to invent it myself. During my stay at the Rochester, I was able to swagger the halls clint-eastwoodly, as well as pine for a few fingers of corn liquor to wash down my spinach frittata. Clint Eastwood appeared in none of the wall posters, but I couldn’t have cared less. He belongs around here.
“But now we get the governors and presidents,” Diane Wildfang says. “And the visitors and the sporty adventure travelers and the people who come to see this great town.”
Sure, but you can always ride in from the north on a black cayuse, full of bullets, venom and charisma. Who knows? You might be discovered.
Robin Chotzinoff is a freelance writer who lives in Evergreen.
The details:
Rochester Hotel, 721 E. Second Ave., Durango, 970-385-1920, 800-664-1920.
