Texas’ Best Hotel Just Might be in the Middle of Nowhere: This Isn’t Fawned Over Marfa — and That’s a Good Gage Thing

The next time you venture west, skip over Instagrammed queen Marfa and head straight to Marathon instead. Just 40 miles from Big Bend National Park, the Gage Hotel — owned by Texas historian JP Bryan, a descendent of Stephen F. Austin — is our kind of desert oasis.

Since Conde Nast Traveler named the 45-room Gage the No. 1 hotel in Texas, everyone has been talking it. Built in 1927 and designed by noted El Paso architect Henry Trost (who also designed Marfa’s El Paisano hotel), the Gage Hotel oozes cowboy charm (the chic kind).

Its 12 Gage Restaurant serves a not-to-be-missed chicken fried steak, and the surrounding botanical gardens are exquisite. But it’s the hotel’s boutique spa that keeps us coming back. The rustic retreat — Navajo meets the James Dean movie Giant, which was filmed here — carries a full-service menu that one might not expect to find in Middle of Nowhere, Texas, including a divine heated-stone massage and an espresso mud treatment that promises to leave you lighter (we’re talking pounds, here) and brighter in 90 minutes.

Trust us: There’s nothing small-town about it.

Gage Hotel, 102 NW U.S. Highway 90, Marathon, 432.386.4205, gagehotel.com.