The Western Lodge in Ouray is the coolest position to stay this summer months

The mountains are hunting a small additional fashionable heading into summer time, as new boutique resorts and unbiased dining places open from ski cities to the Sand Dunes.

Maybe most surprising amid the new destinations — in phrases of layout, food items and hospitality — is a renovated 132-calendar year-old resort in Ouray, at the time a miners settlement, now recognised for incredibly hot springs and remarkable mountain backdrops (and nicknamed appropriately as the Switzerland of The usa).

In Ouray’s historic middle, The Western Resort & Spa is an primary, three-tale wood composition, designed as a boarding residence through the town’s mining period. About the previous two yrs, Denver-based mostly Zeppelin Hospitality diligently restored the hotel to maintain much of its 19th-century character even though bringing it firmly into the present. And, as of May possibly, The Western has officially reopened.

Attendees and readers will discover a new saloon and wooden-fired cafe on the principal floor, 16 guest rooms upstairs and a subterranean spa set to open later this summertime.

“It’s type of like an incident of background that this fairly modest boarding dwelling was however intact,” reported Kyle Zeppelin, who developed The Source, between other jobs in Denver, ahead of setting up his new hospitality enterprise and branching out to the mountains. “The obstacle with the renovation was seriously to just take it back again to its original glory, peeling back layers that didn’t actually have much too considerably to do with exactly where it commenced.”

When The Western opened in 1891, Ouray was even now encountering a heyday, soon in advance of the silver crash that arrived just two yrs afterwards. The hotel creating has stayed in operation, in one type or a different. But when Zeppelin and his team arrived across it through the pandemic, they felt referred to as to acquire on an additional job identical to their transformation of a late 19th-century foundry in Denver’s River North Arts District.

The Resource Market place Corridor opened in 2013, a ten years in advance of Zeppelin Enhancement and its new hospitality arm made their way farther West.

“What we’ve learned along the way (establishing in Denver): It is tough to create character into one technology of improvement,” Zeppelin stated. “Really it will take generations and layers … to really make a wonderful spot.”

In late 2022, Zeppelin offered The Supply Lodge + Market Hall for $70 million. Before this 12 months, he opened the A-Frame Club in Wintertime Park. That hotel features 31 hanging, triangular cabins clustered at the rear of a saloon (both equally A-Frame Club and The Western are united by their culinary programs made by Michelin-experienced and former Denver chef Nic Weber).

After promoting his significant Denver resort and eating places, Zeppelin said, his company is focusing on destinations that could have previously been disregarded in terms of luxury or boutique hospitality choices. So although Wintertime Park and Ouray have lodge rooms to spare, Zeppelin thinks he can fill a area of interest in the design and style and quality of their accommodations.

At The Western, leather-upholstered beds, Colorado-manufactured quilts, wooden rockers, doing work fireplaces and no cost-standing tubs insert to the refreshed Outdated West ambiance. The saloon’s floor is lined in an original painted mural, whilst the hotel’s walls are protected in patterned wallpaper.

Nods to regional record carry on on the restaurant’s menu, in which Weber, the hotels’ culinary director, is using wood hearth to make most dishes. He hopes to get started to explain to a tale of Western cuisine and its numerous influences as a result of these mountain restaurant menus, serving dishes these as sous-vide bone-in small ribs, succotash served with Oaxacan mole and Ute tribe blue cornbread smothered in duck confit gravy.

“We’re making an attempt to convey that attention to depth that arrives with high-quality eating devoid of as substantially of the pretension,” Weber mentioned.

The only point lacking presently from the hotel’s full lineup is its spa, which should really enhance Ouray’s existing town and personal very hot springs, Zeppelin said. By summer, The Western’s cavernous basement will be remodeled with incredibly hot and cold saltwater plunge pools as well as private rooms for spa treatments.

Zeppelin envisions weddings and extra team functions having spot in between the spa, resort and restaurant. His hope is that vacationers want to expertise the remote San Juan mountains with a little bit of luxurious tacked on at the conclude of the working day.

“To be in a position to convey (The Western) back to its unique glory and outside of, that can be a draw, he claimed. “This was (about) getting an present hotel and matching the features with the caliber of the town, the setting up alone and the mountains all over it.”

If you go

The Western is now open up at 210 Seventh Ave. in Ouray. Uncover room availability, premiums and far more data at thewesternouray.com.

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