High Glamour in the High Desert – The Apple Valley Inn

Even at the giveaway price of $2.75 an acre, most people probably thought Bernard “Bud” Westlund and Newton T. “Newt” Bass were crazy when they began buying up some 22,000 acres of “worthless” high desert land to the east of Victorville in the 1940’s. The area, which was known as “Apple Valley,” had for a time shown some real promise as an agricultural fruit basket with orchards filled with eponymous apples much in evidence. By the time Newt and Bud started their land acquisitions, however, all that promise had literally dried up and finding an apple in Apple Valley was about as likely as finding a diamond in Diamond Bar. But Newt and Bud hadn’t become millionaires by being stupid. Successful Long Beach oilmen, the pair had plenty of money to spend on new ventures, ventures they fully expected to turn a profit, which their little Apple Valley experiment would ultimately do, by about 70 million dollars or so within 15 years.

Were they psychic or just lucky? Probably a little of both, but either way, the pair had made their investment at exactly the right time and in exactly the right place. While it might not have necessarily looked like a “Golden” land upon first inspection, Apple Valley, some 93 miles to the east of Los Angeles, held some valuable charms that were soon to become readily apparent, the first being its agreeable climate. Sitting on a plateau 3,000 feet above sea level, unknown Apple Valley actually enjoyed milder year-round temperatures than world-famous Palm Springs, located about an hour to its south. And underneath the dry desert terrain was its second and most critical asset, water, and lots of it, an actual underground lake fed by pure mountain runoff delivered by the nearby Mojave River.

Newt Bass & Bud Westlund getting into the spirit of their new venture. 1947. (applevalley.org)

As Newt and Bud surveyed their recent acquisition they saw not the barren desert landscape most everyone else saw, but thousands of homes and businesses, a whole thriving community, which they named the “Apple Valley Ranchos.” The partners had correctly surmised that with the war coming to an end, the long dormant housing market was overdue for a boom of epic proportions. But Apple Valley Ranchos was not going to be some slapdash effort thrown up for quick profit. Newt and Bud wanted their development to be a showplace of good planning, a place people would be proud to call home. So before a single lot ever hit the market, Newt and Bud engaged prominent architect and fellow Long Beach resident Hugh Gibbs, a specialist in large-scale community developments, to help create a master plan for the future community. While Gibbs carefully planned and laid out a whole 6,000 acre townsite, Newt and Bud poured several million dollars into improvements with more to come in order to turn their vision into reality.

The Apple Valley Inn. 1949. (Robert C. Cleveland)

One of the most critical if not the most critical investment for the community’s success was in a hotel that would serve not only as a place for prospective buyers to stay but also as the social nucleus for the nascent community. To create the hotel, which was to be known as the Apple Valley Inn, Newt and Bud turned again to Hugh Gibbs. Built at the base of a dramatic boulder-strewn hillside at a cost of $750,000-$1,000,000, the Inn was designed resort style with a main building housing the public facilities and guest quarters arranged in private bungalows scattered about the 28-acres of grounds. Both the main Inn and the surrounding guest houses had been executed by Gibbs to evoke the imagery of an old western rancho with generous use of irregularly stacked stone and exposed woodwork stained in mellow hues. The theme was carried over into the Inn’s interiors, which featured heavily beamed ceilings, plank and adobe-style brick walls and floor treatments in cut stone and rust-red clay tile pavers polished to a shimmering gloss.

Entrance to the main dining room. The heavily beamed ceiling had been fashioned out of an old trestle of Nevada's historic Tonopah & Tidewater Railway.

Furnishings, overseen by noted interior designer Albert Parvin, completed the rustic effect. Parvin, who was to become Las Vegas’ premier decorator, responsible for the interiors of the Flamingo, Sahara, El Rancho Vegas, Last Frontier, Desert Inn and Dunes Hotels, arranged an eclectic mix of antiques and modern pieces in comfortable and inviting groupings around cheery fireplaces or floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the Joshua Tree-studded grounds, the expansive pool and the starkly beautiful mountains beyond.

Newt and Bud knew they had a good thing going with their development and its pretty little Inn, but they also knew it wouldn’t sell itself so the pair invested heavily in advertising with Newt, clearly the Alpha Male of the two, becoming the public face of Apple Valley. A caricature of the developer with oversized cowboy hat, oversized chin, oversized chest and teeny-tiny little waist was created and plastered over every ad and brochure for both the development and the Inn for the next decade. Newt loomed large over Apple Valley literally as well as figuratively with the construction of his luxurious modernistic hilltop house perched 300 feet above the Inn, which had been designed by noted Mexican architect Francisco Artigas. From his dramatic hilltop aerie, Newt was master of all he surveyed with the whole of Apple Valley visible to him, and vice versa, of course, just as he wanted. As Newt basked in his role as “Mr. Apple Valley,” Bud appeared content to remain quietly in the background.

Newt and Bud’s PR blitz for Apple Valley included the hiring of a Hollywood publicity firm to arrange for famous people to come up to the Inn. To this end they had great success and from nearly the outset of its gala opening November 22, 1948, the charming Apple Valley Inn began attracting an enthusiastic and well-heeled crowd that would grow to include many famous film and television stars as well as leaders in such diverse fields as business, politics and sports who were drawn to the uniqueness of its architecture and starkly beautiful setting.

As enchanting as its high desert locale may have been, its remoteness initially created an unexpected problem, which brought about an equally unexpected solution. Originally, the local phone company had balked over the expense of installing telephones in the various guest cottages, leaving Newt and Bud with the untenable situation of guests being unable to communicate with the main inn. Their solution was inspired. Placed by the door of each guest house was a small cage containing a homing pigeon. When guests required anything from the main lodge they simply wrote their request on a notepad provided for the purpose, inserted it into the holder attached to the pigeon’s leg and released it. Within a short time, a waiter would appear, not only with the guest’s order, but also a fresh pigeon to await its next command. The homing pigeon idea, a delightful novelty for the guests, worked beautifully until one guest, perhaps feeling sorry for the busy birds, began feeding them biscuits soaked in brandy, which put an immediate end to their industriousness and, ultimately, the whole pigeon plan. By the time the pigeon plan went south though, the Apple Valley Inn was doing so well the phone company had a change of heart and guest phones replaced guest birds in each of the cottages.

During it’s heyday in the 1950’s and 1960’s, the Apple Valley Inn was one heck of a happening place to be with Bonanza Airlines making regularly scheduled flights between the high desert community and Los Angeles. But ladies beware! Apple Valley was Man’s Country. “Women are welcome and loved,” warned a 1952 ad, “but man is king at Apple Valley. There is no dressing up according to masculine standards. Full scope, however, is given to a man’s addiction to high-heeled boots, jingling spurs, gallon-sized hats and gay Western shirts.” Hmmm…Perhaps we should just move on.

When not playing dress up, guests had a multitude of other distractions at the Apple Valley Inn that included  hiking and horseback riding over 90 miles of trails, hitting the links at the adjacent championship golf course, taking a refreshing dip in the heated pool, a spot of tennis, perhaps some badminton, shuffleboard or a moonlight hayride. “You can be as lazy or busy as you please,” was the Inn’s motto. Yet for all its hearty outdoorsiness, the most popular activities at the Apple Valley Inn seemed to revolve around drinking and eating.

The Western Bar

In regards to the former, the Inn offered two unique “extravagantly stocked” cocktail lounges. The Western Bar featured cowhide banquettes, wagon wheel chandeliers and a hayloft, while the Blossom Room featured a sunken bar and large dance floor where guests could modern, folk or square dance to live music nightly to their heart’s content. 14 oz. steaks ruled the roost in all three of the Inn’s dining rooms and there were regular buffets, “Dixie” dinners, Hawaiian Poolside Luaus, BBQs, and Western Steak Frys, a veritable orgy of food, once again geared towards the manly he-man. “Hearty and enormous quantities – roast beef, thicker than thick, lamb chops and steaks, mammoth and charcoal broiled, and always apple pie and slabs of cheese.”

While the men are out doing manly things, the ladies can enjoy a quiet night of gossip in one of Albert Parvin's colorfully decorated guest cottages.

Jayne Mansfield presents a golf trophy at the Inn. 1958. (USC)

During these golden times, the Inn was filled to capacity with a mix of tourists and celebrities with its guest register bulging with such famous names as Bob Hope, Kirk Douglas, Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh, Angela Lansbury, Edgar Bergen, Errol Flynn, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, Gregory Peck, Robert Wagner and Natalie Wood, Clifton Webb, Jane Russell, Barbara Stanwyck, Gene Autry and Fred MacMurray, among a host of others. So many stars came to the Apple Valley Inn during this period that Hedda Hopper made their comings and goings a regular feature of her syndicated gossip column. The hotel even received the blessing of no less of an authority on the western style than John Wayne himself, who declared “I have done a lot of traveling since I became a motion picture actor, yet as a hotel, the Apple Valley Inn compares with the finest anywhere.”

The MacDonald Careys enjoy a dip in the Apple Valley Inn pool.

One unusual guest of the inn was Richard M. Nixon, who sequestered himself away in one of the hotel’s bungalows after his razor-thin loss to John F. Kennedy in the 1960 presidential election in order to complete what was to become his highly praised 1962 best seller, Six Crises. It’s a fair bet Nixon did not participate in the moonlight hayrides or square dance contests during his time at the Inn, but another future president who did join in the fun was Ronald Reagan, no doubt a far more affable prescence at the inn.

In 1964, the Apple Valley Inn got its own celebrity manager when legendary cowboy star Roy Rogers took out a 25-year lease on the property, rechristening it the Roy Rogers Apple Valley Inn. It took a star of Roy Rogers’ magnitude to ultimately dethrone Newt as “Mr. Apple Valley.” After first visiting the place, Rogers and his wife Dale Evans had been so taken by Apple Valley they sold their long-time ranch in Hidden Valley and relocated permanently to the high desert community. “Up here we can get away from the rat race, slow down and enjoy life more,” declared Rogers, adding, “And, oh those balmy evenings. They knock me out.”

Throughout the remainder of the sixties and into the seventies, Rogers continued to provide the same western-style hospitality that made the Inn famous with the 14 oz. steaks, the BBQs, hayrides and square dances much in evidence, but by the time Robert Redford chose the Inn as a setting for his Academy Award-winning film, Ordinary People, in 1980, the halcyon days of the Apple Valley Inn had long come to an end. No longer the glamorous magnet for tourists and celebrities it had once been, the Apple Valley Inn had been thrown over for the glitzier Las Vegas, while the surrounding Apple Valley Ranchos had filled in and settled into a somnolent state of being merely a suburb of nearby Victorville (In 1988, it finally incorporated into its own municipality). Mercifully, Newt and Bud had both passed away by the time their beloved inn closed its doors in 1986. In 2003, there was an abortive attempt to reopen, but this ultimately failed and these days the forlorn looking former inn with its empty and fenced off swimming pool is used as a Baptist church and sits innocuously facing the nearby road and a rather uncertain future.