Columbia Gorge Hotel & Spa

Columbia Gorge Hotel & Spa is a mission-style hotel on a bluff above the Columbia River in Hood River. Simon Benson had it built for the new tourist highway; it opened in 1921 and is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The building is worth noticing for more than its guest rooms: its gardens, stone terraces and bridges sit around Wah Gwin Gwin Falls, where the hotel and river landscape come together. I'd consider it a short, distinctive detour if you like old roadside hotels and landscaped grounds. The payoff is the setting and architecture, not a long outing.

Phelps Creek drops about 200 feet at Wah Gwin Gwin Falls on the hotel grounds before it meets the Columbia. An earlier Wau Gwin Gwin Hotel opened here in 1904, named for the falls. After Benson bought the site, the present hotel was constructed and opened in 1921. A particularly good detail to look for is the stonework: Italian stonemasons working on the Columbia River Highway also built the garden walls and bridges here. The paths and layout of the grounds began with the earlier resort, so the building, falls and garden route belong to the same long-lived visitor stop.