Friday's Internet Edition, July 04, 2008.
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| The El Capitan Hotel as it was in the 1930's. |
- Joe and Lanna Duncan of Fort Davis purchased the Van Horn State Bank building as of Tuesday, Nov. 13th, after searching for nearly a decade for the right property in Van Horn and after nearly a year of negotiations with the bank. The plan is to resurrect the old Hotel El Capitan which was originally built and established by Charles Bassett of El Paso in 1930. The Duncans have had success with similar historic properties in Fort Davis and in Marfa.
The 26,000 square foot El Capitan will eventually have up to fifty rooms, a restaurant, retail and meeting space. It will be the only hotel in town that will be considered an “historic hotel” which will provide a totally different experience for guests than what is available now in Van Horn.
The redevelopment of the The Hotel El Capitan will be done in a very similar manner as has been the progress on The Hotel Limpia in Fort Davis over the past seventeen years and The Hotel Paisano in Marfa the past seven years. “In common with our other historic hotels, we plan to take a building that was originally built as a hotel that at some point was converted into another type of use, and transform it back into a hotel over a one year period and then continue to make improvements to the building as we get a feel for needs and the demands of the public. Both of the Duncan’s other hotels have been awarded with State Historical Markers by the Texas Historical Commission. The Hotel Paisano and two of the Limpia guest houses are listed in the National Register of Historic Places in Washington D.C. Duncan says “We are definitely interested in historic preservation which is evident in the type of properties that we purchase and work to restore.”
The Hotel Limpia has been in Duncan’s family for the most part since 1955. Joe and Lanna moved back to Fort Davis in 1991 to buy the hotel from the family and have since added a whole collection of historic properties in Fort Davis including historic homes and guest houses as nightly rentals in conjunction with the Limpia as well as a twenty-two room 1935 tourist court that they are renovating now. The Hotel Paisano was purchased by the Duncan’s on the Presidio County Courthouse steps at a tax auction in 2001 and has since been renovated and reestablished as a destination in Marfa. The Paisano and the El Capitan were two of five hotels of the Gateway Hotel chain built by Bassett in the 1930’s. Bassett employed famed architect Henry Trost of the architectural firm, Trost and Trost, as well McKee Construction company for his hotels, both who designed and built most of the larger buildings of downtown El Paso in the 1930s and 1940s.
Duncan is a fourth generation resident of Fort Davis. Two of his great-grandfathers were pioneer ranchers in Culberson, Reeves, Pecos and Jeff Davis Counties starting in the early 1880s. The family still has ranch land in Reeves County today. He graduated from Fort Davis High School in 1977 and went to Sul Ross State University for one year and graduated from North Texas State University in 1982 with a BA in Business Administration. Joe married Lanna Tweedy in 1983 at Fort Davis National Historic Site where his grandfather was born in 1894. Lanna attended Penn State University and graduated with a BS in Elementary and Special Education in 1979 and a Masters in Counseling from North Texas State University in 1988. Joe and Lanna have a fourteen year old son, Malcolm.
The Van Horn State Bank will continue to operate as a tenant for up to one year in the building. “They will give us 60 days notice of plans to terminate their lease”, says Duncan. We then plan to start renovation and transformation of the whole building, piece by piece.
It has already been a pleasure for me to begin working with some of the leaders in Van Horn to make this happen,” says Duncan. “It is a beautiful 80 mile drive through the mountains to get here. We look forward to the challenge of making El Capitan again a destination in Van Horn.”
Trustees meet with TASB search team
Trustees of Culberson County-Allamoore Independent School District met in special session last Wednesday evening with representatives of the Texas Association of School Boards, who trustees have hired to perform the superintendent search.
The purpose of the session was to receive input from Butch Felkner and Ernesto Martinez on meetings they had held during the day with campus administrators, students, support staff, community members, and teachers as they prepare a profile to aid them in their search for the district’s next superintendent.
Felkner and Martinez told trustees that they also wanted to visit with them to receive their input as well. They basically asked trustees three questions: What do you think is good about the district? What do you think is bad about the district? And, what traits do you want to see in your next superintendent?
After answering the questions, Felkner and Martinez briefed trustees on the results of their meetings. They told trustees that the information would now be compiled into a working document that will assist the Texas Association of School Board’s efforts to find potential candidates for the superintendent’s position here.
Please Take Notice!
The Van Horn Advocate will come out on Wednesday of next week. This change in our publication schedule is made necessary by the fact that next Thursday is Thanksgiving and the U.S. Post Office will be closed.
Accordingly, our deadlines for next weeks paper have to be moved up. The deadline to get anything, news or advertising, in the November 22nd issue will be the close of business on Monday, November 19th. That way, we can put the paper together on November 20th and get it to the printer that night so that it may be distributed on Wednesday.
These deadlines apply to next week’s issue only.