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Lonesome Dove Inn
225 W. Main
Archer City, Texas 76351
Phone: (940) 574-2700
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Archer City's Lonesome Dove Inn offers novel lodging
By Jean Simmons / The Dallas Morning News
ARCHER CITY, Texas – While Pulitzer Prize-winning author Larry McMurtry continues to turn his hometown into a mecca for book lovers, the Lonesome Dove Inn now provides them with a place not only to scan his many novels but also to read between the lines.
The very name is a come-on, an inducement for Mr. McMurtry's fans and others to tarry awhile, perhaps between hours of browsing his four crammed antiquarian bookstores (featured in Travel July 19, 1998). Booked Up Inc. Nos. 1, 2, 3 and 4 – with an estimated 300,000 volumes – are scattered around the town's rather nondescript square.
Like the author, the owners of the attractive new inn grew up in this western environment and had no difficulty in getting their longtime friend's permission to name their establishment after his most famous book.
Mary Slack Webb, who serves as innkeeper, and her sister, Ceil Slack Cleveland, who now lives in New York, are descendants of pioneer ranchers, teachers and artists. Mr. McMurtry once dedicated a novel to their mother, and Ms. Cleveland, an author herself, wrote a book that describes real people who became fictional McMurtry characters.
Ms. Webb is a semi-retired diagnostician with the Archer City schools. She is assisted as innkeeper by her daughter, Josie Jarrett, and Jeanie Graham.
The inn occupies a colonial-style building that served from 1927 to 1957 as the 14-patient Archer Hospital and later as a private home and showplace for entertaining. It stands on Main Street, a couple of blocks west of the square and "beyond the red light," or so the location was given to us. (Why is the signal light always red when people give directions?)
Novel room names
Each guest room is named for a McMurtry novel and holds a copy of that particular book on one of the many antique furnishings.
If you want the best accommodation, request the Terms of Endearment Suite, which also serves as the bridal quarters. It holds a king-size bed and boasts the only private bath, a huge one at that – equipped, naturally, with miniature bars of Dove soap.
A dove theme recurs throughout the house – in cookies, plant decor, fan pulls, ice-cream bars and as a pillow snack.
Across the hall, the Desert Rose Room (double bed) retains the original white ceramic tiles of the hospital's old operating room, where hundreds of area residents were born.
Other rooms carry the names Evening Star (queen bed), Comanche Moon (double), Cadillac Jack (queen, downstairs), Hud Reading Room (single), Anything for Billy (single) and In a Narrow Grave (mobile trundle bed). More private baths will be added eventually.
It stands to reason that the common room for TV and VCR viewing would be called The Last Picture Show. The book of this name relates to the old Royal Theater, which burned 50 years ago and is now an empty shell on the square. Plans call for rebuilding the theater for live performances, but progress has been slow to this point.
Meetings and other gatherings take place in Buffalo Girls and Texasville, and a continental or full breakfast is served between 7 and 9 a.m. in Old Bolivar's Kitchen.
Hungry?
Where to have dinner can pose a problem unless you want to drive about 30 minutes up the highway to Wichita Falls. But there's always the Dairy Queen, which serves as Archer City's social hub.
Chalk Hill Grill on the square serves breakfast and lunch, as well as dinner on weekends. And if planned in advance, Harold and Bertie Beekman will often provide dinner for Lonesome Dove guests at their next-door Cottage Tea & Antique Shop, which is normally open from 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. (we found their dinner to be a very pleasant, hearty experience).
Adjoining the square is another attractive overnight lodging place, the historic Spur Hotel, which is open on weekends and on weekdays by reservation. The renovated 1929 is owned by ranchers Abby Abernathy and his sister, Vivian Green.
Aside from browsing the bookstores and hoping, perhaps, to catch Mr. McMurtry on the premises, there's little for a visitor to do other than shop The General Store, visit the museum and read the names of servicemen from four wars gracing the Veterans Memorial on the grounds of the Archer County Courthouse.
Mr. McMurtry lives in a large prairie-style house off State Highway 79 south, beyond the Dairy Queen and near the golf course.
Published in The Dallas Morning News: 01.24.99
©1999 The Dallas Morning News
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