Oregon Caves Chateau

I managed to take a photograph of the chateau reflected in the gazing pool.  The pool is fed by the River Styx, which flows out of the Oregon Caves.  Some of the water from the pool is diverted to the inside of the chateau, and runs through the gift shop/dining room.









The interior is on the plain side, which is probably for the best.  I can imagine someone going crazy with bat motifs everywhere.  The door knobs were Artsy-Craftsy.

 I like these lamps. ... although they do have a tin-can feel to them. 

The crossbeams are spliced together with simple joins.  The simple wedges keep the beams together.  Most of the beams were long enough to not heed the splicing ... which in some ways is too bad, because they look cool.

The shaded lamps reminded me of the Yellowstone Lodge, only these didn't have Moose and Mountain stencils on them.

The main lounge had 1950's speakers in the corners.  Back then, there was an intercom system that played music (and maybe announcements) throughout the six floors of the chateau.

It's at a Chateau

We were lucky enough to stay at the Chateau at Oregon Caves.  I was humming the opening to "A Weekend in the Country" during our stay ("just think of it Petra / it's at a chateau..").  It's a small hotel with about twenty rooms.  The Chateau was constructed in the 1930's by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). 


The instide reminded me a little bit of the Inn at Old Faithful.  It was dark, which encouraged looking out the large windows at the forrest outside.  There used to be a short balcony running along the west side of the building, but the snow load was too great in the winters and they were removed.  The interior was a kind of mix of Arts-and-Crafts and pioneer. 
What was amazing to me was that the hotel was in the middle of a steep ravine.  The lobby was on the street level on one of the hotel, but on the other side it was on the forth floor.  The stream from the Oregon Caves was mostly diverted around the hotel except for the bit collected in a reflecting pool uphill from the building.

In December 1964, there was a huge mudslide caused by a pinapple express melting all the snow uphill.  A seventeen foot high wall of debris barrelled down the ravine and through the hotel.  It knocked the hotel off its foundation and they had to use hydraulic jacks and chains to put it back.  As a result, there are places where the doors are not square with their jams, and if you look at some of the support beams in the gift shop, you can see they aren't square.

I think I'll live with the clay ground making our house foundation move a little.