30 classic desert oases - hotels and inns in Arizona and Southern California - Directory

Sunset, Feb, 1997 by Matthew Jaffe

These warm-weather outposts in the Sonoran, Colorado, and Mojave deserts of Arizona and Southern California are the perfect cures for midwinter chills

In a land where Dantes View looks out over Badwater, where Dead Indian Creek runs dry near Hell's Kitchen, and where Skull Mesa looms over Bloody Basin, the desert is the last place you'd expect to find heaven on earth.

Then again, the American desert is about nothing if not extremes, provoking extreme reactions from those who visit it. People either hightail it at the first sign of scrub and saguaro, or they put down roots, finding inspiration rather than dread in the apparent desolation before them.

For such inspired people, the desert has always been the frontier's frontier, a great blank slate with strict natural laws but few cultural constraints. Historically, those who have settled and built here have let their imaginations run to whatever the desert inspires - Moroccan villas, Mexican pueblos, even Mayan temples.

To each his own oasis.

Today, some of the most notable examples of desert architecture are the hotels and inns that opened the terrain to travelers looking for creature comforts where hitherto there had been only creatures. Based on its hellish landscape, the place might have inspired a lot of Motel 666s. Instead, these desert oases were instant classics that set the standard for their time, and continue to do so today.

Korakia Pensione, Palm Springs

An artists' colony recalls old Hollywood and ancient Morocco

Serendipity is a word that pops up a lot in conversation with G. Douglas Smith, owner of the Korakia Pensione in Palm Springs.

It's understandable when you consider how this California kid returned from years of owning a cafe in Greece, landed in Palm Springs, and found a run-down 1924 house built by an expatriate Scottish painter, Gordon Coutts. The house, called Dar Marroc, was designed in the Moroccan style by Coutts to re-create his days in Tangier. He turned Dar Marroc into an artists' colony, hosting such notables as Grant Wood and Rudolph Valentino.

Smith had always dreamed of running a small inn. Dar Marroc seemed perfect for that. Under his ownership it has drawn an assortment of actors, dancers, musicians, and photographers and - past be prologue - become an artists' colony all over again. The business allows this sheltering guy Smith to do the traveling he loves, and to look for the furnishings that help make his 18-room inn unique.

"This is a great thing to do for someone who likes to buy stuff," says Smith.

Call it serendipity. Or, more appropriate to the architecture, kismet. Life ain't bad for Doug Smith. Or for a guest at the Korakia.

Take the upper guest house - it's really a one-bedroom apartment. The kitchen looks out over the pool, past a Moroccan-style fountain, to the boulder-strewn San Jacinto Mountains beyond. The bedroom has French doors that open onto a tiny balcony, while the living room is filled with Smith's finds: an Afghan table, a couch from Greece, a small table with Islamic-style inlay, a camel saddle.

Other rooms have their own collections. Gather them all together in a single compound and you've got a desert classic for the ages.

"I've had people from Yemen say it's just like Yemen, and an Egyptian composer say it's just like Egypt," says Smith. "Then again, old-timers say it's just like old Palm Springs."

KORAKIA PENSlONE

Where: 257 S. Patencio Rd.

Rates: From $79 to $239.

FYI: The Korakia has several "Fresno-style" motel rooms adjacent to the main courtyard. If you're looking for a room in the original house, be sure to specify. Also, there's no computerized reservation system here, Smith doesn't take credit cards, and the rooms are free of TVs.

Contact: (619) 864-6411.

Furnace Creek Inn, Death Valley

Where mission-style elegance meets hell on earth

No place, is more extreme than Death Valley. It's hotter, drier, and lower here than anywhere else in the western hemisphere. In spots, the very earth can cut like glass, what little water there is can poison. And yet, nearby, snowcapped 11,000-foot peaks tower above Satan's handiwork, as if to mock those unfortunate enough to find themselves in this purgatory.

From the beginning, it had tourist attraction written all over it.

Even before the turn of the century, promoters were thinking about Death Valley as a destination for vacationers. The hype became a local joke: in 1907 a local newspaper, the Death Valley Chuck-Walla, lampooned promotion efforts with a mock pitch that bragged, "All the advantages of hell without the inconveniences."

When the mission revival-style Furnace Creek Inn opened in 1927, it not only eliminated inconveniences, it brought luxury to Death Valley. Designed by noted Los Angeles architect Albert C. Martin, it was conceived by the Pacific Coast Borax Company as a way to keep the Tonopah & Tidewater Railroad in Death Valley, since the railroad would soon lose its main customer with the closing of nearby borax mines.

The hotel was an immediate success and quickly expanded, adding more rooms, a golf course, and a spring-fed swimming pool. All of this at a time when local Panamint Shoshone Indians still moved to their mountain hunting villages in the Panamint Range during summer, and many locals still lived in makeshift quarters. From both perspectives, the Furnace Creek Inn meant that the modern world had finally arrived in Death Valley.