The LARK Bozeman

The Imperial "400" Motel went up on Bozeman's Main Street in 1963, to a Streamline-era design by Palmer & Krisel, with a pool for hot summer days. The LARK kept the building, let the pool go and put the warmth into a fire instead. It burns on the covered terrace by the lobby, in a fireplace of board-marked concrete under a steel hood, with logs stacked in a rack beside it and a yellow bird over the door. More than 200 local people were hired for the conversion, which began in 2013; the hotel opened in 2015 with 38 rooms and has since grown to 67.

The locals are on the walls too, with local art in every room. From the gallery above, the lobby is pale hardwood and a leather sectional wrapped round a low wooden table, under a chandelier of old tools on long rods, whisks and ladles among them: the contents of a kitchen drawer, promoted to the ceiling. We had a LARK King for one night in June, on a road trip, and cannot remember anything special about it, but it did a job. White linen, a grey and yellow throw, and in some of the kings a desk under a window onto the rooftops and the hills. What we do remember is the courtyard and its fires, which we thought brilliant.

There is no restaurant and no bar. There is coffee, roasted by Treeline Coffee Roasters and poured in the lobby café from 6:30 in the morning until 4 in the afternoon, and there is ice cream. Anything more is a walk: gute Laune, a German wurstbar, is a minute from the lobby, and the rest of Main Street is beyond it. Bozeman has a brewery as well. We went to try the beer, and liked it.

Yellowstone was why we were there at all. Bozeman sits between two of the park's entrances, so the first decision is which road in. The north one, at Gardiner, is 78 miles off, through Livingston and south down Paradise Valley to the Roosevelt Arch; the west one is 89 miles up the Gallatin Canyon, with the river right beside the road. That is the one we drove, and it is reason enough to choose the west entrance. Nearer in, Peets Hill and Burke Park are ten minutes' walk east, a green ridge with the town below it, and in winter Bridger Bowl, 16 miles away, has the skiing.

There are rooms for families, a Queen + Bunk among them, and dogs are welcome. We did not spend much time in the hotel, and nobody should plan to: you are there for Bozeman, and for the wildlife and the wilderness around it. The LARK seems to know as much. It has given part of its lobby over to a Map Room.