Ritchey Hotel, 1886

Duane's take

The marker's got the story, and here's my telling of it. Out in Brewster County, where the Big Bend country stretches so wide a man can lose track of the horizon, there stood a building that knew exactly what it was for: and it faced its purpose head-on. The Ritchey Hotel, built in 1886, put up in frame and adobe, and it didn't turn its back on the action.

No sir. It was built facing the old cattle loading pens on the Southern Pacific Railway. Right there.

Eye to eye with the work. Now think about what that means. Those ranches scattered across the Big Bend country (and scattered is the word, because out here the land doesn't cooperate with anybody's sense of convenience) those cowhands and ranchers had to push cattle from places most folks couldn't find on a map just to reach a railroad.

And when they finally got to town, dusty and trail-worn and ready to ship their cattle out on the Southern Pacific, the Ritchey Hotel was standing right there waiting on them. Lodgings. A saloon.

Everything a man needed after the kind of ride the Big Bend country demands. You could watch the loading pens from the front of that place, keep an eye on your cattle while the day wound down. Frame and adobe, 1886; built for the work, built for the land, built for the people who moved through one of the loneliest and most magnificent stretches of Texas that has ever existed.

That hotel knew its place in the world, and it stood in it.

What the marker says

1886 frame and adobe. Built facing old cattle loading pens on the Southern Pacific Railway. Lodgings and saloon for cowhands and ranchers in town to ship cattle from widely scattered ranches of the Big Bend country. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark, 1965.