Ruby's Inn and Bryce Canyon City
Near Bryce Canyon, Utah
The cluster of hotels and gas pumps at the park entrance has a single family at its root. In nineteen sixteen a rancher named Reuben Syrett, whose nickname was Ruby, brought his family to this raw stretch of southern Utah to homestead. A few weeks in, a neighbor told him about a strange canyon nearby, and the Syretts drove out one Sunday to see the rim.
They were so struck by it that they began telling everyone they met, and then began hosting the curious who came to look. By nineteen nineteen they had permission to build a rough lodge near the rim called the Tourist Rest. When the area became a national monument in nineteen twenty three, Ruby moved the operation back to his ranch and renamed it Ruby's Inn.
Crucially, he donated land so a road could be built right to the park boundary, which put his inn squarely on every visitor's path. That inn has stayed in the family for more than a century. And in two thousand seven, the settlement around it incorporated as its own town, Bryce Canyon City, so it could capture tax revenue to fund its water system and services.
A rancher's Sunday drive became a city.
