Strater Hotel

Strater Hotel is a historic hotel on Main Avenue in Durango, Colorado. Opened in 1887, the hotel is one of the city’s best-known landmarks, with a strong Old West character, Victorian interiors, carved woodwork and period-style rooms. Its location in downtown Durango places it close to the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad and the mountain landscapes of southwest Colorado, an area that has long attracted film productions looking for classic Western or road-trip settings.

The hotel is most relevant as a filming location from National Lampoon’s Vacation (1983). Although the Grand Canyon exterior in the film is El Tovar Hotel in Arizona, the interior hotel scene was filmed at Strater Hotel in Durango. This makes the sequence a split location: the Griswolds appear to be staying at the Grand Canyon, but the lobby/interior material was shot more than 300 miles away in Colorado.

In National Lampoon’s Vacation (1983), Strater Hotel is used for the scene where Clark Griswold tries to cash a cheque during the family’s stop at the Grand Canyon. With the family running short on money and the road trip becoming increasingly desperate, Clark ends up taking money from the hotel cash register. The old-fashioned hotel interior works well for the scene, giving the stop a more traditional tourist-lodge feeling while Clark’s behaviour shows how far the supposedly wholesome family holiday has started to fall apart.

Strater Hotel is also connected to “Nurse Betty” (2000), which filmed in Durango and used the hotel as one of its Colorado locations. The film follows Betty Sizemore after she witnesses a murder and escapes into a fantasy built around her favourite soap-opera character. The Strater’s historic interiors and small-city setting fit the film’s movement through offbeat American locations, although its screen use is less iconic than the “National Lampoon’s Vacation” scene.

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