Orient Hotel
Pecos, Reeves County, Texas
Marker Inscription
"Finest from Ft. Worth to El Paso." Saloon built 1896 of Pecos Valley red sandstone. Hotel opened 1907 by R. S. Johnson, owner. Headquarters for land promoters, salesmen, families of settlers in early years of Pecos Valley development. Restored to House West of the Pecos Museum. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark, 1964.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Built of local red sandstone as a saloon in 1896 and opened as a hotel in 1907, the Orient billed itself as the finest lodging between Fort Worth and El Paso. In the booming years of Pecos Valley development it served as a headquarters for land promoters, traveling salesmen, and the families of arriving settlers. It survives today restored as the House West of the Pecos Museum.
Why it matters
The hotel captures the speculative energy of West Texas town-building, when a railroad and a land promotion could conjure a settlement out of the arid Pecos country almost overnight.
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Related people
- · R. S. Johnson
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Reeves County-Pecos, Texas
Pecos, TX
The flat, arid Toyah Valley around Pecos drew farmers to its river and springs long before the town existed—Native people are believed to have irrigated crops here in the 16th century, and Mexican farmers later raised grain and vegetables. Cattlemen arrived in the 1870s, and the Texas & Pacific Railway's 1882 line to El Paso brought merchants and mechanics to Pecos City and Toyah. Large-scale irrigated agriculture began around 1900, aided by deep wells and the 1935 dam, the only one on the Pecos River in Texas.
Spanish Explorers
Pecos, TX
Long before permanent settlement, Spanish explorers probed the country along the Pecos. In 1583 Antonio de Espejo, returning from the New Mexico pueblos, reached the river and named it Río de las Vacas for the great buffalo herds; guided by Jumano Indians to their camp on Toyah Lake, he followed the waters down toward the Big Bend. Seven years later, Castaño de Sosa became the first European to travel the Pecos its full length on his own march into New Mexico.
Emigrants' Crossing
Pecos, TX
Where the treacherous Pecos River spreads thin over exposed rock, Emigrants' Crossing offered one of only three fords along a 60-mile stretch. Gold-seekers bound for California in 1849 favored this passage, giving it the name California Emigrants' Crossing, and in 1858 the Butterfield Overland Mail built an adobe station and walled corral here for its coaches. For a generation it was a vital gateway across a river that few could otherwise cross.
Reeves County
Pecos, TX
Carved out of Pecos County in 1883 and organized the following year, Reeves County took shape as railroads and settlers pushed into far West Texas. It was named for George Robertson Reeves, a Confederate colonel who also served in the Texas Legislature, and the town of Pecos became its seat. Markers like this, erected in 1936 for the Texas Centennial, fixed the young county's origins in public memory.