Densho Digital Archive - Kerry Christenson Powell Interview (denshovh-pkerry-01-0017)

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KL: You said you guys came back here after South Carolina?

KP: Yes. Well, no, we came to Imperial Valley for two years, and he tried farming, tried working in the farms, and he just wasn't, we weren't getting anywhere. And his dad really needed help at the Frontier Motel to add more rooms. So we did add more rooms right away. And the last twenty units Raymond and I actually added on our own. I designed the rooms, because I'm an artist and a designer, and I knew what was needed in the rooms, and measured the distance, the size of them basically and all that. So we did that over the years, added all the extra units. It became Best Western, it was one of the first ones to become Best Western. It started on the West Coast in Long Beach, Best Western did, and we were one of the first ones to join, because it became international, of course, all over the United States (and the world).

KL: I know you've said different parts of the hotel's history in different parts of the interview, but I wonder if you would kind of in one swoop walk us through the history of the hotel, when it was started, when you began it, when the additions were...

KP: It was 1947 with twenty units, and probably... in two or three years we added another ten units. Then we added four units, then we added six more units. [Laughs] Then we added ten more units, and then we added, what, twelve more units. Anyway, there are seventy-nine units ultimately.

KL: Who built it in 1947?

KP: I'm not sure who built the original building, but I do know that Francis Pedneau built the last twenty or twenty-five units for us. And probably (A.L.) Bonnefin was in there somewhere, the (local) construction company. And we added the pool because we needed it. And it was great for my kids for sure, to get to use the nice warm swimming pool all in the summer. And as I said, I did coaching at the local pool, too.

KL: Did you guys live on site at the hotel?

KP: We did for a while. There was a little house in the back, and we lived in that house for a while. And then we wanted our own place , and so we bought the property in town and built our house there.

KL: When did you make that move?

KP: '61. '60, '61, we built our house and moved in. I've been in there ever since, and (we) expanded it, (remodeled).

KL: What was the experience like to design those hotel rooms?

KP: It was really interesting, really interesting. My husband couldn't visualize things, I could visualize things, so when we added on to our house, I could visualize how it would look, enlarging it. And I knew what space we needed in the motel rooms in the bathroom part of it, and the layout, because we learned what would work and what hadn't worked. The original rooms had showers in them, and we had to put tubs in them, so we had to make bigger spaces for some of those things, into the motel rooms. Of course, the architect had to finish up with the final plans for the actual width of the lumber and all that kind of thing, which I was aware of.

KL: That (motel) is a pretty important part of tourism in the southern Owens Valley. Were you part of any kind of organization, or was there a structure to the tourism industry in the 1960s?

KP: Just through Best Western. They started international advertising through that. But later on, Raymond and I became active in the Chamber of Commerce and helped advertise and go to trade shows and advertise Lone Pine and the valley, and worked with Bishop and Inyo County doing that kind of advertising all over the place for the valley to extend the season from just summer. I told Raymond thirty years ago, "We're not just an in-transit, we don't have to just be an in-transit, we can be a weekend, at least a weekend, because we have so much to offer in Southern Inyo." And now we offer Manzanar and our own film history museum, and the visitor center down there, all these different things.

KL: When did the hotel become part of Best Western?

KP: In '47, '48.

KL: Oh. So it was built as a Best Western Hotel. Oh, I didn't realize that.

KP: Really, '48, '49, right around in there.

KL: Do you have any memorable experiences attached to the hotel, any particular guests or big conventions?

KP: Well, we had a lot of movie people. I'm trying to think, movie stars staying there, like Chill Wills stayed there, one of the early character actors, and he and his buddies were playing cards in the service room, and they were cussing up a blue streak and having their drinks. [Laughs] And my father-in-law went down there and told them to calm it down because they were right by the swimming pool, and there were a lot of families out there and he didn't like that kind of language around the families. And they kept it up, so he went in the room and he packed their bags and he told them, "You're out of here." He moved them out of there. [Laughs] So there were other incidents like that, that happened with some of the crazy movie people that we had stay there. The remake of High Sierra, they actually used a room in the motel in a scene, and they have used the pool since then with other scenes. John Wayne came down there to say goodbye to everybody, he usually stayed at the Dow (Hotel) when he was in town, but he did know people down there, because some of his crew stayed down there and he would come down there. So when he knew he was dying, he came by and said goodbye to everybody, my son got to meet him then. Martin is my younger son.