Every so often a trip throws me an unexpected curveball. Sometimes those curveballs lead to disappointment; sometimes they end up being really nice surprises. I never would have imagined I would have found one of the latter when we pulled into West Yellowstone, Montana to check into our second of three hotels on our Grand Teton and Yellowstone swing. But that's exactly what happened.
I may have mentioned once or twice on this blog that I am somewhat obsessed with neon and signs, either separately or together (together is very definitely better). So when we left Yellowstone National Park's West Entrance and turned right onto Boundary Street in West Yellowstone, I thought I'd about died and gone to heaven. Staring straight at me in the early evening light were three vintage motels with their neon ablaze. It was glorious.
My expectations for our time in West Yellowstone were pretty low. I am not trying to put the place down but I figured this was a place where we'd just eat and sleep and get out back into the National Park as quickly as we could. I expected that the place would exist solely to cater to tourists wanting exactly what we wanted at the lowest possible price and I think I was pretty much right. There is little reason for the town of West Yellowstone to offer deluxe accommodations or cutting edge food. The attraction that's going to keep people coming back is the Park, not the town. And the Park's not going anywhere any time soon.
But that reality is probably precisely what has kept in place what I found when we turned on to Boundary Street. No way would these motels with their glimmering, multi-colored, straight-out-of-the-mid-20th-century neon stick around for what is probably 50 or 60 years if West Yellowstone was constantly replacing their hotels with bigger and better and more modern establishments.
Boundary Street is a bit of a tease. We explored the town looking for more than those first three motels we saw when we made that right turn and failed. We found a couple of more motels worth writing about but they were not lit up in the same way. Although one motel could be, they just need to turn the lights on.
So let's start with those couple...
Beyond the initial three motels we saw, we found the Ho-Hum Motel, with the neon owl sign above affixed proudly to the North Canyon Street end of their main block of rooms, and the non-neon Pony Express Motel shown below. I know the Pony Express is not immediately impressive to the eye but there's one piece of fading Americana that amuses me to death every time I see it. We'll get to that.
I photographed the Ho-Hum owl during the day because for some reason (and I'm assuming it was not just the two nights that we checked), the motel does not turn on the lights at night. I would have loved to have seen this sign's colors, even if it had been just the owl lit up (since the rest of the sign does not appear to illuminate). This was super disappointing to me. Maybe it's broken?
As a side note before we move to the Pony Express here, who names their Motel "Ho-Hum"? It literally means "boring". I'm assuming the name does not affect the occupancy rate.
So about that Pony Express sign...
When we moved to the United States in 1979 and started taking family vacations, I remember seeing the same sign at many of the hotels and motels we stayed at on our trips: "Color TV". Yes, at one time it was common to find only black and white sets in motel rooms (just like we used to have at home when I was growing up) and having a color box could be a real differentiator. Now, of course, the notion today of having anything but a color flat screen television in a motel room is ridiculous. But some motels still have the sign hanging around and I love it when I find these relics.
I know you can't see it well in the photograph below but the Pony Express' "Color TV" sign is in awesome condition, features different colored letters to emphasize that they are really serious about their color television and to top it all off the sign includes "by RCA" at the end. I love this. But like the Ho-Hum owl, it also doesn't light up. So like the Ho-Hum photo, this one is also taken during the day.
Those first three motels we saw when pulling in to town were Al's Westward Ho Motel, The Dude Motel and the Round Up Motel. From a multiple colors of neon perspective, Al's and The Dude are the two best signs in West Yellowstone. Al's mixes script and block capital letters into a simple sign that works well next to the simple, gable-roofed motel office. I love the simplicity of execution here, especially the top of the sign where the "Al's" is featured against what I can only assume is a hat-shaped background.
The Dude sign is better than Al's. It is difficult to argue against the beauty of a sculpted neon sign and while the majority of The Dude's sign is non-neon flat backlit translucent, the dude himself is a work of art in neon tubing. This is by far my favorite sign in West Yellowstone. There's no comparison. I would need the Ho-Hum owl to get lit up to enter any semblance of argument about that issue.
And then there's the Round Up. If there's a better argument for what neon can do to fancy up a place than the Round Up Motel, I'd love to see it. The Round Up's office is about as unremarkable a building as you could find. The only way it could really be less well thought out as a piece of architecture is if whoever designed this thing just left out the windows. But stick an L-shaped (in plan view) neon sign next to and over the top of the brick box and it becomes something to look at and appreciate.
I love the simple lettering on this sign and the way the "Round Up" is slightly angled and encircled by a lasso rope, reinforcing the name itself. I'm sure this sign cost a pretty penny when it was installed and for me, it's money well spent. It makes the whole building sing.
West Yellowstone will likely never be much more than it is today. It's a town of 1,200 permanent residents serving up to 12,000 tourists per day. But I was wrong about this town. I expected to find a place not worth mentioning in the story of my travels. Ho-hum, if you will. But these motels represent the best of what we found just outside the West Entrance of Yellowstone National Park. And with that statement I'm not setting a low bar. I love these motels. They are a well-preserved throwback to a different time in American history. I hope they keep these things lit for a long, long time.
One more appreciation to close this post. Our last three trips have been mostly focused on nature and I've written a lot about the American landscape and wildlife this year. I appreciate these buildings and these signs tapping into a love of writing about design. Definitely worth a post. Thanks, West Yellowstone!
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| Close up of The Dude sign with that fantastic neon. |
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