With the recent reopening of the Hotel Settles in Big Spring, I couldn’t help but wonder about the viability of such a hotel in the remote West Texas town.

Last week, I wrote about the renovation of the 82-year-old Art Deco hotel, which had been sitting vacant for 30 years until the completion of a six-year restoration project in December.

It’s a remarkable resurrection tale—from the hotel’s storied past, to its decay into dilapidation, to Brint Ryan’s $30 million redevelopment project, carefully focused on historical detail.

I’m definitely looking forward to a visit, but will interested travelers like me sustain the venture?

Big Spring—on Interstate 20 between Midland and Abilene—has a population of about 22,500. Tourism attractions include the city’s 400-acre Comanche Trail Park, the Heritage Museum, the Hangar 25 Air Museum, and Big Spring State Park.

Ryan says the hotel is counting on tourism traffic, but not exclusively.

“We hope first and foremost that we pick up a lot of the destination business—people who want to come and see something unique,” he says.

In addition, the hotel expects to draw business related to local institutions such as the Veterans Administration Hospital, the Alone USA petroleum refinery, and the local prison industry (the Federal Correctional Institution and the GEO Group’s four private prisons house about 5,500 inmates).

Ryan also notes the regional market—folks from places like Midland and Odessa who want to visit the hotel’s amenities, such as the Settles Grill.

“We think there are multiple different revenue streams, and the hotel will cater to different clientele,” he says.

Another likely contributor to business activity at the Hotel Settles is the natural resource that enabled Howard County rancher W.R. Settles to build the hotel in the first place, back in the 1920s: Oil.

Big Spring sits on the western side of the Cline Shale, a geologic formation that by some estimates contains as much as 30 billion barrels of recoverable oil—more than the prolific Bakken Formation of North Dakota or the Eagle Ford Shale of South Texas.

The Cline play is in its infancy, but energy development activity is gaining steam in Big Spring. Big Spring sales tax revenue was a record high last year, and this year is running 25 percent ahead of that, Mayor Tommy Duncan says.

When it comes to hotels, the city’s lodging tax revenue more than doubled from $495,000 in fiscal year 2010 to $1.145 million in fiscal 2012, says Debbie Wegman, coordinator of the Big Spring Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Duncan says the oil boom will be important to the Hotel Settles’ success.

“There’s a lot of activity and a lot of growth that will support it,” he says. “I’m not an economist, and it would be hard for me to predict what would happen without the oil boom. I believe at this point that it will support it, and I’m hopeful that in addition to the oil industry, we’ll be able to attract … some conventions and those types of things” to the Settles.

Wegman says the Hotel Settles is important to the revitalization of Big Spring’s downtown, which has seen new retailers setting up shop in recent months. The city is also investing more than $1 million to spruce up its Big Spring Municipal Auditorium, a 1930s historic theater downtown.

“It’s a three-year phased project,” she says. “And it’s going to be awesome.”

The Hotel Settles provides Big Spring with a comprehensive meeting facility with lodging, a restaurant, and meeting rooms, she says.

“It’s going to be just a real boom for people to come and visit,” Wegman says. “It’s not only going to be great for tourism, it’ll be a great place for meetings and conventions, and it’s real excitement for people in our community also. It’s a nice restaurant to go to.”

Mayor Duncan seconds that notion. He was impressed by a recent dinner at the Settles Grill.

“They asked for comments and recommendations,” Duncan recalls. “My wife and I and our two guests really enjoyed our meal and had no recommendations other than, ‘More of the same.’”

It all sounds promising to me, and I plan to be among the destination travelers checking into the Settles for a stay that’s rich in West Texas history and ambience.

Hopefully the resurrection of the Hotel Settles will be one of those serendipitous occasions where the right people, the right project, and the right economic climate coincide to create a lasting success story.

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Photos by Mark Knight/Courtesy of Hotel Settles.

If you’ve driven through Big Spring in the past few weeks, you probably noticed the red neon Hotel Settles sign, shining like a beacon over the city and the surrounding West Texas plains.

Developers flipped the switch on the sign—and on a new era for the Settles—on December 28 with the opening of the meticulously renovated hotel. The six-year, $30 million renovation resurrects an historic but long-neglected structure that sat vacant and deteriorating for 30 years.

“When we fired the sign up for the first time in 30 years, we could hear cars all over town honking,” says Brint Ryan, chairman of the Settles Hotel Development Company. “You can’t miss it.”

The 15-story hotel is the tallest building in Big Spring and served as a center of community activity for decades after it first opened in 1930. A Howard County rancher, W.R. Settles, built the hotel during the oil boom of the 1920s for $500,000, Ryan said. Abilene architect David Castle designed the building, which was one of several Art Deco hotels built in West Texas during the time period.

But with the onset of the Great Depression and the concurrent drop in oil prices, Settles couldn’t make the payments for the project, and he ended up losing both the hotel and his ranch, which he had put forth as collateral.

“So it was a financial disaster for them, but it was a magnificent hotel,” Ryan said.

In the following decades, the Settles changed ownership numerous times, and hosted many a local wedding reception, professional conference, service club meeting, and the like.

“But after 50 years of deferred maintenance, ownership changes, and failure to really keep the building up, it began to fall into decline,” Ryan said. “When I was growing up, by the ‘70s, it had deteriorated to the point to where it had become for all intents a flophouse, a house of ill repute.”

In 1980, the hotel closed, and the conventional wisdom was that it was likely gone for good. Various developers considered plans to rehabilitate the building—which at some point became city property over unpaid taxes—but they arrived at the same conclusion: The hotel was beyond repair.

It wasn’t until 2006 that Brint Ryan became involved. Ryan, a Big Spring native who graduated from Big Spring High School in 1982, is founder, chairman, and CEO of Ryan LLC, a big-time tax services firm based in Dallas.

Ryan says he got a call about a potential downtown Big Spring renovation project, which led to his interest in the Settles.

“I actually just fell in love with the property,” he said. “It’s a phenomenal building, but it was just about as close to total destruction as you can imagine.”

The decay was remarkable. Part of the roof had caved in. On one floor, the dead pigeons were piled waist-high, Ryan said. But he decided to buy the building from the city for $75,000, despite an appraised value of negative $250,000.

As plans began to take shape, the city ponied up a $3 million economic development incentive to get started, Ryan said. A year-long abatement project to remove lead paint and asbestos began in 2006, resulting in the removal of about 700 tons of debris.

“We just about filled up the city landfill with that stuff,” Ryan said.

The ensuing redevelopment project took five years, culminating in last month’s re-opening. Along with 65 guest rooms, the hotel has event and meeting spaces, a pool, a Jacuzzi, a fitness studio, the Settles Grill, and the Pharmacy Bar & Parlor.

Ryan said he was motivated to undertake the project because of the building’s qualities—“an architectural gem,” he marvels—and the opportunity to participate in an important community project in his hometown.

“And three, everybody I talked to, they said ‘Oh no, that can’t be done,’” Ryan said. “And anytime I’m told I can’t do it, my personality is to go do it, just to prove you wrong.”

Ryan is thrilled with the results. The renovations took into account the building’s original blueprints, and the National Park Service has accepted the hotel for its national register of historic places, he said.

“We restored it as close as possible to the original as you can imagine,” Ryan said. “W.R. Settles, if he walked in the lobby today, he’d recognize the place.”

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Photos are by Mark Knight/Courtesy of Hotel Settles.

The renovation of the Briscoe-Garner Museum in Uvalde hit a rough patch recently when a fire broke out in the historic home.

But repairs from the December 11 fire are taking place in tandem with the renovation work, and museum officials hope the hiccup won’t delay the planned re-opening of the museum this spring.

Nobody was injured in the fire, and because the exhibits are stored for renovation, no items or historical artifacts were damaged, said Ben Wright, spokesman for the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History at UT Austin, which owns the museum.

The fire started when a heat gun was used near flammable materials. The fire department contained the fire quickly.

“We’re very hopeful that construction will be finished in March, and we will then install the exhibits and plan for a grand opening soon after,” Wright said. “In the near future there’s going to be a very fine museum here, a very effective public resource that tells the story of these two local figures.”

The $1.1 million renovation of the old Garner Museum began in January 2009. Much of the project has been related to improving the old structure, including foundation and asbestos-abatement work, Wright said. The museum is posting updates on its Facebook page.

Vice President John Nance “Cactus Jack” Garner lived in the home on North Park Street for more than 30 years. The museum first opened to the public in 1973 with exhibits focused on Garner’s life and career.

As part of the renovation, the second floor will be opened to the public for the first time, featuring exhibits related to Governor Dolph Briscoe.

“Governor Briscoe connects us with the narrative of the rest of our state, and Vice President Garner connects us with the national narrative,” Wright said. “It connects the local community in very special and meaningful ways with the state and national history.”

Be sure to check out the April issue of Texas Highways for a feature about visiting Uvalde.

One of the oldest tourism destinations in West Texas is up for sale.

Rock hounds have been making pilgrimages to the Woodward Ranch since the 1930s—and still do—to hunt for agates and gemstones on the 2,200-acre patch of prairies, mesas, and mountains, about 16 miles south of Alpine.

But after the 2011 death of Trey Woodward—the third generation Woodward to own the ranch—his widow Jan Woodward and other family members decided it was time to sell.

“It’s just too much for one woman to take care of,” Jan told me during a recent phone call. “This is what’s happening to farms and ranches all over. As people grow older and can’t continue to do the work, the children have moved away. The small family-owned farms and ranches are becoming a thing of the past. It’s like having dial-up Internet.”

Jan is ambivalent about the sale. She would be just as happy to stay. To complement the ranch’s tourism business, Jan leases the land to cattle ranchers and mule-deer hunters. Visitors can also hike around to view the wildlife or go horseback riding (on their own horses).

“I don’t want to move,” she says. “I love it here.”

Texas Ranger J.C. Bird homesteaded the ranch in 1884. His adopted sons, including Frank Woodward Sr., each inherited parcels of the original homestead.

It was Frank Sr. who realized the local geology was of interest to rock hunters—especially the red plume agate found only there. He opened the ranch to tourists in the mid- to late-1930s. (Big Bend National Park opened a few years later, in 1944).

In the late 1940s, National Geographic featured the Woodward Ranch in a rock-hunting article, Jan says.

“It’s a rock hound’s paradise,” she says. “It’s all igneous, formed by a small volcano. The remnants of it are still here. It’s known today as Eagle Peak.”

Despite the potential for a sale, Jan recently hired a foreman and has made improvements to the ranch to accommodate visitors, including improvements to the ranch’s RV and tent camping areas.

There’s a new meet-and-greet area for campers, a new restroom and shower, a new telescope for stargazing, and improvements to the two cabins. Also, as of January 1, the ranch is now open six days a week, up from three days.

“We want our guests to have a good time and be comfortable here,” Jan says. “In today’s economic uncertainties, who knows if (the ranch) is ever going to sell?”

Jan says she’d like to see a buyer keep the ranch open to rock hounds, but there’s no guarantee.

“If you want to come see it, now’s the time,” she says.