Stephanie Holmes checks into Dufur's Historic Balch Hotel, in Oregon.
Location: Dufur, a very small city in rural Oregon, about 21km from the larger (but not that large) city, The Dalles. When I say small, I mean it; the population of Dufur — a city that spans 1.5sq km — was 638 in the last census back in 2017.
Getting there: It's just over a 90-minute drive from hipster haven Portland, but it feels like a world away. Dufur is between the Columbia River Gorge and the Oregon High Desert and sits among beautiful rolling wheat fields, orchards and farmland. It's a really beautiful area. Make sure you stop at the waterfalls along the way and make a detour to the Rowena Peaks viewing area for incredible views across the Columbia River, across the border to Washington State and further into the Oregon countryside.
First impressions: The grand, red-brick building is a stand-out landmark on the road out of town. As we pulled up it was glowing in the golden-hour sunlight.
Hotel history: The three-storey Edwardian-style building was built in 1907 and opened as a hotel in 1908. The location was chosen for its proximity to a stagecoach stop serving Barlow Rd on the Oregon Trail, which linked St Louis to Oregon City, and for travellers on the Great Southern Railroad. The hotel had hot water, steam heat and electric lights in every room on opening — a rarity in the area at the time, making it popular with travellers. Fortunes turned in 1928 when the railroad left town and the hotel was turned into, variously, a motel, boarding house, and private home. In 1986, a Portland contractor bought the building, refurbishing it to its former glory, and in 1987 the building was added to the National Register of Historic Places. Ownership has changed hands a couple of times since then — most recently in 2015 when Southern Oregon's Claire Sierra and Josiah Dean bought it and added dining, spa and art gallery, aiming to make it part of the community as well as a place for those passing through.
