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On
June 19, 1941, a cross-country traveller who had spent the night at Alpine’s
Holland Hotel picked up a black-and-white postcard of the hotel and mailed it
to a relative. While the sender’s scribbled message amounted to nothing out of
the ordinary, a promotional blurb printed on the card did a good job of summing
up the venerable Big Bend holstery in a catchy way:
The Largest Hotel
In the Largest City
In the Largest County
In the Largest State
In
the Largest Group of States
In the World
While all that could not
be disputed, the Holland had only 70 rooms, certainly no giant. But beyond being
a comfortable overnight stop for motorists passing through on U.S. Highway 90,
a major east-west route, the hotel stood as the social center of the Big Bend.
Cattlemen drank coffee and made deals there, Alpine’s
civic clubs gathered there each week and the hotel’s ballroom accomodated chamber
of commerce dinners, dances, wedding receptions and other events.
Brewster
County rancher John Holland built the hotel in 1912 at the corner of Sixth Street
and the broad thoroughfare that bears his name, just across from the town’s railroad
depot. Though Alpine
had neither dikes nor tulips, in pondering what to name his new inn, Holland saw
Holland Hotel as imminently suitable. Holland’s son Clay took over management
of the hotel when the elder Holland died and had it renovated in 1923, adding
a third story and bathrooms in each room.
“[The Holland] is so thoroughly
equipped that it will do credit to cities many times the size of Alpine,
and the traveling public are invariably surprised as the advantage enjoyed at
this modern hostelry,” the Marfa
New Era bragged in 1924.
The glowing article continued: “No one enterprise
in this part of Texas has given to
this city, and to this part of the Southwest, more favorable publicity nationally
than has the Holland Hotel. No trip through this section is complete without a
stay at the Holland, and without question one of the pleasantest memories of the
journey is the time spent at this hotel.”
Three years later, Holland thoroughly
transformed the hotel, adding a three-story addition. Designed in the Spanish
colonial style by noted El
Paso architect Henry C. Trost (his credits also include Marfa’s
Hotel
Paisano and Van Horn’s
El
Capitan Hotel), the new building cost $250,000. According to a special edition
of the Alpine Avalanche published when the hotel reopened on March 16, 1928, the
Holland had “common battery telephone service, and many other modern conveniences.”
By
the end of World War II,
American travel tastes had begun to change. Railroads saw fewer and fewer passengers
as automobiles became the nation’s primary mode of transportation. Tourists liked
the convenience of motels where they could park right in front of their room,
unload their bags and then head for the motel swimming pool. With business declining,
Clay Holland sold the hotel in 1946.
A year later, the hotel’s new owner
got the kind of publicity no innkeeper wants. On March 20, 1947 a married woman
armed with a handgun confronted the hotel’s assistant manager in the lobby of
the Holland and shot him five times. The woman left the man bleeding on the floor
and went to her residence, where Brewster County Sheriff Clarence Hord arrested
her about an hour later for assault with intent to murder. The hotel employee
survived, but whatever its nature, his relationship with the woman did not.
A
few years later, Holland figured in a more upbeat news story. In June 1950, rancher
Gene Cartledge presented hotel manager Frank Hofues with what he represented as
an eaglet. The bird turned out to be a common blackbird, not the majestic and
threatened American bald eagle, but Hofues made a pet out of it anyway. Named
Blackie, the bird became one of the hotel’s permanent guests. But during the day,
he made his rounds around town, begging for food or sipping suds at a nearby bar.
The bird took particular pleasure in soaring toward some unsuspecting victim from
behind, landing parrot-like on his or her shoulder.
The
hotel continued through a succession of owners until 1969. That year, the latest
owner opted to shut down the hotel, selling off all the furniture and equipment.
Gene Hendryx, local radio station owner and state representative, bought
the shuttered hotel in 1972 and restored it as a combination hotel and office
building. The Hendryx estate sold the building in 1985 and it again went through
several owners. Jennifer and John Jones of Sonora
bought the Holland in 2009 and did some substantial remodeling.
The Holland
is no longer the largest hotel in Alpine
and Texas is no longer the largest state in the union,
but it’s still popular with visitors. The management even provides ear plugs for
guests who don’t find the rumble and clatter of passing trains sleep inducing.
Holland
Hotel - Book Here
©
Mike Cox
- August 18,
2011 column
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