The Willow House was made for sky-watching. Owner Lauren Werner planned it that way. “The intent was to position every window and every patio as a perfect frame of either the Chisos Mountains or Santa Elena Canyon without any sort of obstruction in between,” she says. “I want to create spaces that really make you appreciate the landscape.”

A former SMU pre-law student, Werner lived on the Terlingua property for much of its construction process. She got to know her surroundings while sleeping on the floor in whichever space was the most habitable. Her respect for the land comes through in the design, from decorating the 12 casitas in colors and textures that exist naturally on the land to the placement of the sunken living room in the main house, which allows guests to take in the revolving dance of light and shadow over the West Texas desert.

Her success has left design magazines gushing since Willow House opened in 2019. Architectural Digest called it the “ultimate escape.” Indeed, its ability to immerse you both in the rugged land of Big Bend country—the hotel is only 5 miles from the national park—and in the cosmos is transportive. Guests linger around the hotel’s many communal spaces, including the fire pits, two kitchens, and the outdoor dining tables, co-mingling in the picturesque setting. As night falls, the suspended outdoor bed placed far enough away from the casitas offers desert solitude and an ideal spot to lie back and wait for a shooting star.

With a flag-strewn balcony emblazoned with the hotel’s name in bold letters, the Holland Hotel reigns over Alpine’s main thoroughfare. Opened in 1912, it was expanded and revamped in 1928 by Henry Trost. A master of many architectural styles, Trost built the Holland in Spanish Revival; his signature dark wooden beams with gold etchings stretch across its cavernous red-tiled lobby. “The entrance and lobby Trost designed give that unexpected grand sense of arrival,” says Charles Mallory, the hotel’s owner who reopened its shuttered doors in 2012.

The space was once occupied with ranchers and oilmen who’d come to town for a little society, and many still do. Outside in the lobby’s hacienda-style courtyard, trees and a fountain make a cool oasis in the summer heat. Popular with locals, the hotel’s Century Bar and Grill serves hearty American fare, so you can linger with a rib-eye and a tumbler of whiskey. The pool table in the lobby invites you to hang out even longer.

For all its authentic Texas style and history, you’d think the Holland Hotel might cost more than, say, the Hampton Inn. But no, a stay at the Holland gives you big character for less than the price of a budget chain. The Holland’s rooms, with their burgundy velvet curtains and comfy beds, are neat and cozy, even if a few elements show their age. (A renovation is on the horizon.) Guests pay an economical price to reside within the storied stucco walls of a still venerable Texas icon.