Estes Park, Colorado
AA-2026-6166AD
On the image
A grand white hotel sits at the foot of the Rockies looking exactly as confident as it did the day F.O. Stanley built it, back when a man who had made his fortune in steamer engines decided that mountain air alone would not cure his tuberculosis without also a colonnade and a cupola. By the 1960s the Stanley Hotel had settled into the comfortable business of being a landmark, hosting tourists who drove up from Denver in station wagons to admire a view that required no admission fee and a lobby that required considerable starch in one's collar.
The jagged rock formation behind it, known locally as the Twin Owls, had been doing its scenic duty for millions of years without asking for a construction permit, which made it a more reliable neighbour than most. Nobody in this meadow yet knew the hotel would become world-famous for a novel and a film about a man losing his mind in an empty corridor; in 1960s Estes Park it was simply a well-run resort with good mountain air and better cocktails.
The photographer stood well back in the tall grass, giving the hotel the kind of respectful distance you'd give a minor head of state, letting the mountains do most of the talking. It is a picture of a building being exactly as important as it believed itself to be, which, unusually for hotels of this vintage, turned out to be true.
The historian's note
The Stanley Hotel opened in 1909 in Estes Park, Colorado, built by inventor Freelan Oscar Stanley, co-creator of the Stanley Steamer automobile, who came to the region seeking relief from tuberculosis and stayed to develop it as a resort destination. The Georgian Revival building, with its white clapboard façade and red roof, was amongst the first hotels in the region wired for electric light and equipped with a fire alarm system, both considerable novelties for a mountain lodge of its era.
By the 1960s the hotel operated as a seasonal resort serving visitors to the nearby Rocky Mountain National Park, its grounds framed by the granite outcroppings known as the Twin Owls. The hotel's later cultural fame, following its association with Stephen King's 1977 novel The Shining and subsequent film adaptations, postdates this period; in this decade it was known primarily as a historic Colorado resort rather than a literary or cinematic landmark.
The surrounding meadow and mountain backdrop place the hotel within the town of Estes Park, at the eastern gateway to Rocky Mountain National Park, a location that has remained a fixed point of regional tourism since the early twentieth century.
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Visually related — by likeness
The Stanley Hotel from the Meadow, Estes Park, Colorado, 1960s. 1960–1969. Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library, AA-2026-6166AD. https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/the-stanley-hotel-from-the-meadow-estes-park-colorado-1960s.
@misc{aaAA20266166AD,
title = {The Stanley Hotel from the Meadow, Estes Park, Colorado, 1960s},
year = {1960–1969},
howpublished = {Archive \& Atlas, Historical Image Library},
note = {Accession AA-2026-6166AD},
url = {https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/the-stanley-hotel-from-the-meadow-estes-park-colorado-1960s}
}TY - ART TI - The Stanley Hotel from the Meadow, Estes Park, Colorado, 1960s PY - 1960–1969 PB - Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library AN - AA-2026-6166AD UR - https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/the-stanley-hotel-from-the-meadow-estes-park-colorado-1960s ER -
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