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.
#idahohistory #sodasprings #sterrit
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.
#idahohistory #sodasprings #sterrit
RSS Feed