There are resorts in the Rocky Mountains that are more luxurious than Dunton Hot Springs. And some that are more remote. But no place I know combines comfort and the backwoods as well as Dunton. Maybe it's the hot-spring pools. Maybe it's the museum-quality art, not to mention the heated floors, that enhance the property, a restored 1890s mining town. No matter. Mountain men — and women — who prefer their sheets ultrasoft and their Bordeaux properly aged will do no better than this log-cabin settlement turned Western resort in Colorado's San Juan Mountains, some thirty miles northwest of Telluride.
Such thoughts as these went through my head as I padded across the snow late one night in March of last year. I was wearing a thick white bathrobe as I walked from our cabin to the bathhouse, a two-story log building that accommodates the largest of the resort's three hot springs. For a while I was content to soak in the 105-degree water. Then I moved outside to a smaller, rock-lined pool. Unlike many other natural springs, the water at Dunton has only the barest hint of sulfur and is imbued with a trace of lithium, resulting in a soak that is said to elevate one's mood.
Not that mine needed elevating. Dunton had cast its spell at first glance. My wife, Karen, and I had driven twenty-two slippery miles along the West Dolores River, then stared in semidisbelief at what appeared to be a Western ghost town in a meadow. Aspen, pine and blue spruce cloaked the surrounding hills. Beyond them rose the jagged San Juan Mountains.
Christoph Henkel, the German-born heir to a home-products empire, and his close friend Bernt Kuhlman had a similar response when they came upon Dunton, on a ski holiday in Telluride in 1994. Although the town had seen better days, having endured, among other things, being taken over by a motley crew of bikers and hippies in the 1970s and '80s, Henkel and Kuhlman were instantly smitten by the old log cabins and the pristine setting. They bought the property and restored it, going to extraordinary lengths to make Dunton look the way it did when the gold miners and fur trappers camped there in the early part of the past century. Initially only family and friends were invited to stay, but in 2003, the town — on 700 acres situated 8,700 feet above sea level — opened its doors to paying guests.
"This place just halted our kids in their tracks," says New York Times writer Lois Smith Brady, who visited with her family this past June. "We drove up, and they said, 'Hey, it hasn't been renovated!' but when we walked into our cabin, there was this terrific combination of rustic and high-tech. And the art on the walls was amazing."
A sophisticated design sense is one thing that sets Dunton apart from other rugged retreats. You see it everywhere: in the painted-wood wedding bed from Rajasthan in the Honeymoon Cabin, in the matching pair of kilims in the cabin called the New House and in the Native American robe above the bed in the Vertical Cabin. All this reflects the unique vision and resources of Henkel (now the sole owner) and his wife, Katrin, a dealer in Old Masters. "When people come here, they are coming to our home," says Henkel. "We get very personal about it, so you don't feel like you're at a hotel."
Brady and her bunch booked the Vertical, one of eleven cabins scattered in the meadow along with a library, spa and yoga studio. The social center is a former saloon and a dance hall artfully joined. Everything you see is original, though not all the buildings started at Dunton. The yoga studio, for example, was a stagecoach station near Grand Junction, up north. The library was an old granary in Bayfield, not far from Durango, to the south.
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