In these days of Yelp reviews and Air BnB, we’re quite used to seeing personal ratings of overnight accommodations. It wasn’t so common in 1874 when The Mormon Country, A Summer with the “Latter Day Saints,” written by John Codman was published.
Codman lauded the mineral springs in Soda Springs and predicted that they would one day “infallibly make it a place of great resort.” His review of the Hotel Sterrit, though, would decidedly get a single star nowadays.
“Some ‘hotels I have seen in the wilds of Africa, the plains of India, the slums of Constantinople; but the ‘Hotel Sterrit’ of Soda Springs is the meanest building of that description into which I ever crept.” He went a step further by insulting the proprietor, to wit, “Sterrit(‘s)… energies seem to be directed to raising a numerous family, and making his boarders pay for it by getting nothing in return for their money.”
There being a single game in town of the hotel variety, Codman spent a fortnight in the Sterrit. He grumped that “I know that I can attribute my health to the waters, for food, of which there was none, could have had nothing to do with it.”
Codman hastened to report that a new and comparatively comfortable hotel was to be completed the next spring. What he didn’t know was that in 1887 a truly luxurious and beautiful hotel would be built in Soda Springs, the original Idanha, fulfilling his resort prophesy.
Codman lauded the mineral springs in Soda Springs and predicted that they would one day “infallibly make it a place of great resort.” His review of the Hotel Sterrit, though, would decidedly get a single star nowadays.
“Some ‘hotels I have seen in the wilds of Africa, the plains of India, the slums of Constantinople; but the ‘Hotel Sterrit’ of Soda Springs is the meanest building of that description into which I ever crept.” He went a step further by insulting the proprietor, to wit, “Sterrit(‘s)… energies seem to be directed to raising a numerous family, and making his boarders pay for it by getting nothing in return for their money.”
There being a single game in town of the hotel variety, Codman spent a fortnight in the Sterrit. He grumped that “I know that I can attribute my health to the waters, for food, of which there was none, could have had nothing to do with it.”
Codman hastened to report that a new and comparatively comfortable hotel was to be completed the next spring. What he didn’t know was that in 1887 a truly luxurious and beautiful hotel would be built in Soda Springs, the original Idanha, fulfilling his resort prophesy.
An old woodcut of the Sterrit. A grand hotel it wasn't.
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