Nights at the Zane Grey Pueblo

We opened the door to the Call of the Canyon room and looked out over Avalon Bay on Catalina Island.  The fog was just beginning to lift even though it was three o'clock; half  the day already spent.  White boats were glowing in the afternoon sun.  This view and this room were ours for four glorious days.  As we stood there soaking in the moment,  loud, deep chimes shattered our dreamy state.  The Catalina Chime Tower was located only fifty yards from our window.  They chimed again in fifteen minutes and my travel buddy and I looked at each other wordlessly.  We were thinking the same thing:  Oh, no!

Catalina Chime Tower

But I am happy to tell you the chimes stopped at eight that evening.  We opened our window to a cool breeze and blessed silence.  We slept like babies that night and did not wake up until the chiming began again at eight a.m.

Zane Grey and his wife visited Avalon on their honeymoon in 1906, and did not return until 1914.  By then, he had become a successful author of bestselling western novels.  Besides traveling in the Southwest, fishing had become a passion so he started to spend his summers here.  Finally, in 1924, he bought a hillside tract from Philip Wrigley and built a sprawling seven-bedroom adobe home in the style of a Hopi pueblo.

How could a writer not gain inspiration from up here?  The ocean to the left; wilderness to the right.  Zane Grey started his day early, writing in his study before breakfast while watching the wild boar from his window.  After breakfast, he walked down to the Tuna Club, the private club in Avalon dedicated to the conservation of marine life and good sportsmanship.  After chatting with fellow members, he boarded his 52-foot boat Gladiator and spent the rest of the day fishing.  At night, he and his family would retire to the large living and dining area for dinner and then build a fire and read or play the piano.

The Tuna Club

The teak beams in the living room were brought back from Tahiti.  His success enabled him to travel to distant places like the Galapagos, New Zealand, Fiji and Hawaii.  He lived a charmed life.

Born in Zanesville, Ohio in 1872, he actually began a career in dentistry until a trip to Arizona made him change paths.  He dropped everything and moved West.  He wrote 89 novels before he died at the age of 67.

 

The rooms at the hotel are all named after his novels such as Black Mesa, Desert Wheat and Thunder Mountain.  While I was there I read Wanderer of the Wasteland and my travel buddy checked out Riders of the Purple Sage.  Another hotel guest, an older gentleman, read aloud to a group of friends every evening around the pool.  It's Grey's descriptions of the Southwest that I love the most.  They whet my appetite, such as this passage about Death Valley from Wanderer:

"One moment, however, he gave to a look at the Funeral range that he had come through, and which now loomed above the valley, a magnificent and aweinspiring upheaval of the earth.  The lower and nearer heights were marked on Dismukes' map as the Calico Mountains, and indeed their many colors justified the name.  Beyond and above them towered the Funerals, spiked and peaked, ragged as the edge of a saw, piercing the blue sky, a gloomy and black-zigzagged and drab-belted range of desolation and grandeur. . . . That scene up the valley of death was confounding.  He gazed spellbound, and every second saw more and different aspects.  How immense, unreal, weird!" 

 Fantastic!  I just put Death Valley on my list of places to visit.

 

Because the hotel overlooks the city of Avalon, climbing up the hill and then the hundreds of steps to the pueblo, means you stay put all evening.  There is no restaurant although a small breakfast of fruit, toast and coffee is available every morning.  My travel buddy and I bought food and put it in the communal refrigerator.  We ate on the balcony or in our room and spent quiet evenings reading from his books.  There are no tv's, which suited us just fine.  Staying in an historic home of a literary giant is what this trip was all about!

Portrait of Zane Grey