Timberline Lodge

Timberline Lodge is a historic mountain lodge on the south slope of Mount Hood in Oregon. Built in 1937 as a Works Progress Administration project during the Great Depression, the lodge sits at around 6,000 feet and was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1977. With its heavy timber construction, stonework and isolated alpine setting, it has become one of the most recognisable hotels in horror cinema.

The lodge is best known as the exterior of the Overlook Hotel in Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining” (1980). This is an important distinction, because Stephen King’s novel was inspired by The Stanley Hotel in Colorado, while Kubrick’s film used Timberline Lodge for the exterior shots of the Overlook. Most of the interior hotel scenes were filmed on sets at Elstree Studios in England, not inside Timberline Lodge.

In “The Shining” (1980), Timberline Lodge appears as the snowbound Overlook Hotel where Jack Torrance takes a winter caretaker job with his wife Wendy and son Danny. The lodge is seen in the exterior establishing shots, giving the fictional hotel its remote mountain identity. Its real-life architecture, surrounded by snow and open slopes, creates the sense of isolation that defines the film, even though the Overlook’s interiors were created elsewhere.

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