Painted Desert Inn

Painted Desert Inn is a historic Pueblo Revival landmark at Kachina Point, set above the Painted Desert. It combines a small museum and visitor information with wide views, all inside a building with a rich Route 66 story. Give it time inside and out: the murals and rooms are half the visit, and the desert vista is right at the doorstep.

From I-40's Exit 311, the Inn is about two miles from the park's north entrance. It has public flush restrooms, drinking water, a bookstore and gift shop, and access to the Painted Desert Rim Trail. A seasonal ice cream parlor is the food option here, so don't plan this as a meal stop or rely on ice cream without checking whether it's available. This is a museum and landmark, not overnight lodging.

For a photo, include the stepped inn against the badlands; from inside, the broad view is framed by the large windows.

Herbert David Lore built the first inn from petrified wood and native stone and called it the Stone Tree House. Family recollections put its completion before 1920, but the firm date is his 1924 land-office registration. Lore ran it for nearly twelve years as a roadside attraction with meals, Native arts and crafts, a taproom, six small lodging cubicles and two-hour motor tours of the Black Forest.

The National Monument bought the inn and four square miles around it in 1936. Architect Lyle Bennett redesigned the building in Pueblo Revival style, and Civilian Conservation Corps workers carried out the plan. It reopened on July 4, 1940, with meals, souvenirs and lodging for Route 66 travelers, then closed in October 1942 as wartime travel was restricted. The Fred Harvey Company brought it back in the late 1940s.

Structural damage pushed the concession out in 1963, and the Inn faced demolition before a public campaign saved it. It became a National Historic Landmark in 1987.

Look for thick stuccoed masonry, flat roofs, earth colors and projecting roof beams. Mary Colter came in 1947 to repair the building and create a new color scheme; she positioned plate-glass windows to make the desert part of the experience. The windows frame the Painted Desert from inside, while the low, stepped walls sit naturally against the surrounding terrain.

Hopi artist Fred Kabotie painted murals for the dining and lunch rooms, including the Buffalo Dance and Salt Lake scenes. The Salt Lake mural follows two Hopi men on a sacred 230-mile round trip to Zuni Salt Lake, passing through what is now the park to gather salt. The Buffalo Dance depicts a winter ceremony praying for good hunting and snow. These are stories with a specific homeland and meaning, not just decoration for a historic room.

The Inn sits on bentonite clay, which swells and shrinks as its moisture changes. That movement repeatedly shifted the foundation, cracking walls and causing water damage. Repairs from 2004 to 2006 used thirteen floating roofs and jointless pipes, and relaid flagstones to improve drainage. The preservation work is part of the story here: keeping this landmark standing meant working with a restless foundation.