|
 In 1997, after years of
neglect, the Occidental Hotel was a shadow of its former self. The
ceilings of rooms had caved in, paint was peeling from the walls, and
dirty old carpeting covered the floors. The electrical wires were
too old and worn to be trusted, the plumbing was defunct, and the
heating system was dead. Worst of all, the roof had started to
leak in many places, and percolating water was beginning to undermine
the inside structure of the building.
 It looked as though the grand old hotel
would very soon follow so many other historic hotels of the American West into
oblivion — torn down and replaced by a parking lot or a strip mall.
But,
just in time, the current owner (Dawn Wexo) bought the
hotel and began the slow, laborious, and expensive process of
bringing it back to its former glory. Dawn, had previously worked on the restoration of other historic buildings,
and she had "a
positive feeling" about the Occidental when she first saw
it. She suspected that there was "a historic
gem" under all of the dilapidation.  As
it turned out, she was right. Gradually, as multiple
layers of ancient and unyielding paint were scraped away, and multiple
thicknesses of decaying carpet were pulled up, the grand old
Occidental began to reveal itself. And it was even more
intact and splendid than Dawn had suspected. 
On
the first floor, all of the wonderful decorated tin ceilings
proved to be in perfect condition. The wooden floors under
the dead carpets were in fine shape (with the exception of the
dance floor in the saloon, which needed to be jacked up five
inches on one side).  During
the 1940s an 1950s, false ceilings and walls had been installed to
"modernize" the saloon. When these were pulled
down, beautiful original wainscoting and intricately embossed
wall coverings were brought out of hiding. The cellars and
attics of the Occidental proved to be bulging with historic
furnishings and architectural details that could be
re-conditioned and re-installed.
Typically,
as buildings grow older, they are subjected to endless
remodeling by a succession of owners, and their original character is destroyed in the
process. Year after year, original structures and
architectural details are ripped out and thrown away, until
virtually nothing remains of the original spirit of a building. As
Dawn Wexo discovered, there was a reason why this had not
happened to the Occidental Hotel.  In
1918, two ranchers named John and Al Smith (father and son) won
the ownership of the Occidental Hotel in a high-stakes poker
game in the back room at the Occidental Saloon. Not
knowing what to do with their enormous new possession, they
asked Al's wife Margaret to take over running the hotel for
"a month or so" until they could sell it.
Margaret
Smith ended up running the hotel for 58 years, until she died at
the age of 92 in 1976. And during all that time, she rarely
threw anything out. This
was partly because Margaret Smith was naturally frugal, but it was
also because the Occidental Hotel became a focus and joy of
her life. She stored away the past of the hotel as
lovingly as other people might store personal memories in a
photo album.  Instead
of ripping out ornate tin ceilings and "unfashionable" wall coverings,
she covered them up with false ceilings and walls, or simply a coat of paint. When the need to
"modernize" the hotel led to the purchase of new
furnishings, the old ones were often stored away instead of junked.
In
this way, the Occidental Hotel became a kind of time capsule,
just waiting for somebody to come along to "dig it
up." And two women who never knew each other
—
Margaret Smith and Dawn Wexo — worked together (in a manner of
speaking) to bring about the survival of the unique historic
treasure that is the Occidental Hotel.
The Occidental Hotel
Lobby as it looks today. |
