Historic Hotels & Inns in Utah

Ways in

Themes in Utah

Salt Lake City’s mansions and downtown hotels

Salt Lake City’s five historic stays are two downtown hotels and three mansions in the historic districts to the north and east. The Peery opened as a hotel in 1910 to Charles B. Onderdonk’s Prairie Style design and is now part of Hilton’s Tapestry Collection, and the Kimpton Hotel Monaco fills the 13-story Continental Bank Building of 1923–24, a hotel since 1999. The mansions are grocer Emanuel Kahn’s 1889 Queen Anne house on South Temple, now The Anniversary Inn; Henrietta Dyer Ellerbeck’s 1892 brick house in the Avenues; and Dr. Edward D. Woodruff’s 1906 mansion on Capitol Hill, now Inn on the Hill.

National park lodges at Zion and Bryce Canyon

The Union Pacific’s Utah Parks Company hired Gilbert Stanley Underwood to design lodges at both parks. At Bryce Canyon, the stone-and-timber lodge of 1924–25 and its deluxe cabins of about 1929 are a National Historic Landmark; guests sleep in the Western Cabins, in three suites and a studio on the lodge’s second floor, or in later motel buildings that aren’t part of the landmark. The lodge is seasonal, and 2027 dates weren’t posted when we checked. At Zion, the 1925 main lodge burned in January 1966 and was rebuilt in 108 days, so book one of its 40 historic cabin units: they date from 1927–29, each with a stone fireplace and porch, and Zion Lodge is the only lodging inside the park.

Park City and the Wasatch Front

Park City’s Washington School, built in 1889 of limestone quarried at Peoa, came through the Great Fire of 1898, was sold to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in 1936 and reopened as a 12-room hotel in 2011. South of Salt Lake, Provo’s Hines Mansion is an 1895 pressed-brick Victorian built by R. Spencer and Kitty Hines with money from mining, business and real estate, and Springville’s Art City Inn was built as a hotel in 1892 by Moses and Anna Kearns Johnson, run as the Kearns House until 1937 and reopened with 11 suites in 2022.

Southern Utah’s film-era lodge and motel

In Kanab, brothers Chauncey, Gronway and Whit Parry, who ran tour buses to the southern Utah parks, turned an 1892 house into a motel and restaurant, and Parry Lodge opened in summer 1931. It became the base for Hollywood crews, and the lodge says more than 100 productions stayed; ask for a room in one of its six historic motel buildings, built between 1930 and 1952. In Moab, the Apache Motel went up in 1954–55 for travelers drawn by the uranium boom, and John Wayne stayed there while filming. Near Zion’s entrance in Springdale, Under the Eaves Inn has three rooms in a 1930s ‘storybook’ cottage of stucco, cobblestone and red sandstone.

Road trip

Salt Lake City to Zion, inn to inn

Salt Lake City

Start with two nights downtown at The Peery or the Kimpton Hotel Monaco, or in a mansion B&B on Capitol Hill or in the Avenues. Pick one from our Salt Lake City guide.

Provo and Springville

Stop in Utah County at the 1895 Hines Mansion in Provo, whose themed suites each have a two-person jetted tub, or at the Art City Inn in Springville, an 1892 hotel with 11 suites and a light breakfast.

Bryce Canyon

Sleep in a Western Cabin or a lodge suite at The Lodge at Bryce Canyon, the 1925 National Historic Landmark. The lodge is seasonal, and 2027 dates weren’t posted when we checked, so plan this leg for the open season.

Kanab and Zion

Finish at Parry Lodge in Kanab, in one of its historic motel buildings, or inside Zion National Park in one of Zion Lodge’s 1927–29 cabins. Under the Eaves Inn in Springdale is under a mile from the park entrance.

Context

History and architecture

Utah became the 45th state on January 4, 1896, and its oldest historic stays date from the years just before. In 1889 Park City built its limestone Washington School and grocer Emanuel Kahn built his Queen Anne house on Salt Lake’s South Temple; the hotel that is now Springville’s Art City Inn followed in 1892 and Provo’s Hines Mansion in 1895. The Peery opened in 1910, and the 13-story Continental Bank Building went up in 1923–24. The Union Pacific’s Utah Parks Company then brought tourists to the southern parks, opening Gilbert Stanley Underwood’s lodges at Zion and Bryce Canyon in 1925. In 1931 the Parry brothers opened their lodge in Kanab, later a base for Hollywood film crews, and Moab’s uranium boom produced the Apache Motel in 1954–55.