Hotel Limpia

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm not gonna add a single word it didn't earn. The Hotel Limpia, Jeff Davis County, out where the sky gets serious and the creeks have names worth keeping. The Union Trading Company built this place in 1912, and they didn't go halfway about it.

Doctor's office, drugstore, stylish guest rooms, and porches; spacious porches; the kind you could lose an entire afternoon on without feeling the least bit guilty. It became the community social center of the area, which out in that country means it became just about everything. You wanted the latest news?

Hotel Limpia. You wanted to play a game of croquet? Hotel Limpia.

You wanted to watch the voting results come in? Pull up a chair on one of those porches and settle in. The guests were a particular mix: area ranchers who knew this land the way you know your own kitchen, and then wealthy Texans who came drifting in every summer chasing the cool mountain climate.

Locals had a name for that second group. They called them Summer Swallows. Now, the hotel's story didn't run in a straight line from there.

It was converted; became apartments, became offices; and for almost twenty-five years it housed Harvard University personnel. Harvard. Out in Jeff Davis County.

The marker doesn't blink when it says that, so neither will I. Then, in 1978, the Hotel Limpia was reestablished. Some buildings just refuse to be anything other than what they were built to be.

What the marker says

Named for a nearby creek, was built here by the Union Trading Company in 1912. With a doctor's office, drugstore, stylish guest rooms, and spacious porches the hotel became a community social center where area news could be heard, a game of croquet played, or voting results observed. Guests included area ranchers and wealthy Texans, known locally as "Summer Swallows," who came for the cool summer climate. Converted for use as apartments and offices, the hotel housed Harvard University personnel for almost 25 years. The Hotel Limpia was reestablished in 1978.