Benbow, California

The small community beside the South Fork Eel River owes its name and its existence to a single family. The nine Benbow children, all grown heirs of Arthur Benbow, pooled their resources in nineteen twenty-two and bought more than twelve hundred acres of redwood-country land. Cattle ranching alone would not pay, so they commissioned San Francisco architect Albert Farr to design a Tudor-style resort hotel.

The Benbow Inn opened on July seventeenth, nineteen twenty-six, ran on power from a small dam the family built on the Eel, and quickly became a destination for Hollywood and Washington alike. Spencer Tracy, Clark Gable, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Herbert Hoover all signed the guest book. The inn survived Depression, floods, and changing highway patterns, and it remains open today and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The community around it is barely a dot on the map, but the inn is one of the most celebrated small hotels on the California coast.