Hotel Jerome, Aspen review: How the west was won

Hunter S. Thompson no longer props up the bar, but the Jerome is a storied celebration of US history, writes Lance Richardson.

The hotels of the US cover a vast spectrum, from Waldorf Astoria splendour to the Bates Motel variety on a dusty road to nowhere. Somewhere in this spread sits a series of hotels that act like living museums, embodying the story of the country's westward expansion, the lofty ambition of its people to tame the wilderness and make something monumental and new. The Driskill is one such hotel, built in Austin, Texas, to flaunt the wealth of a local cattle baron in the 1880s. The Old Faithful Inn, in Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, is an imposing log cabin, perched next to an enormous geyser as if to prove the dominance of man over nature.

The Hotel Jerome in Aspen, Colorado, was conceived as a way of bringing civilisation to the Rocky Mountains. A lavish resting place in a town that sought to fend off savagery with a gilded opera house, the hotel aspired to rival The Ritz in Paris. Jerome Wheeler, a Civil War hero and the president of Macy's department store, put up the necessary capital after migrating across from New York City. His wife hated the move west, but the locals seem to have loved it - they got the first elevator west of the Mississippi River and lined up for hours just to take a ride.

The Jerome opened in 1889. The tax department seized it 20 years later. Ski combat troops slept on the floor during World War II. It closed in the 1960s, then reopened again.

A Bauhaus artist painted the terracotta exterior white and blue; the paint was later removed. Hunter S. Thompson took up residence at the J-Bar and became a famous fixture. The town blossomed and turned into a haven for millionaires and billionaires stopping by for an apres ski.

All this cumulative history takes a toll, of course: the Jerome closed last year for a much-needed makeover. After five months it reopened in December, with impressive results.

When I visit the Jerome, on its first weekend after the reopening, the finishing touches are still being applied. But sometimes you know a cake is good before the icing has fully set.

The lobby is a curious melange, with miners' artefacts and animal trophies sitting alongside Chinese vases and zebra-print couches. On paper it doesn't work, but in person the effect is something of an elegant bazaar, with vestiges of the Old World, Orient and Africa shipped into the Wild West on a steam train. You feel as if you're on the frontier as conceived by the editors of Vogue.

This impression continues into the terrific Living Room lounge, with cow-skin floor rugs and an open fireplace. Women in fur coats sip Beaujolais beneath a vintage American flag with only 38 stars (Colorado was the 38th state to join the Union). The Living Room and the more casual J-Bar are good enough to attract a local clientele; this is the sort of place in which you want to relax after a chilly day on the ski slopes.