Grand Hotels of the West

You might think an institution as posh and highfalutin as a grand hotel surely had its origins in Europe, serving the gentlefolk on their travels. You might think so, but you’d be wrong. Sure, the old country had inns and taverns and public houses aplenty, but hotels in general, and the “Grand Hotel” in particular, are uniquely American inventions, states A.K. Sandoval-Strausz, a professor of history at the University of New Mexico. “In the first decade of the republic, American