In a desert with an old uncovered wagon and neatly piled stones, a small wooden building with several cacti of different shapes and sizes on its porch.

Built in 1946 by Roy Rogers and Gene Autry, the Pioneertown Motel became a place to get out of LA for some of Hollywood's actors. To this day, the Pioneertown Motel, located outside of Joshua Tree National Park is an oasis in the desert. It's a retreat from the hustle and bustle of city living and where you go to slow down.

ABOUT THE SPACE

The Pioneertown Motel is a single-story inn with 20 rooms in a remote community named Pioneertown, in the middle of the desert in Southern California.

Two small beds with a nightstand between them with southwest themed bedding and pillows in a room with two graphic posters on the wall.

Two men sit on the porch of an old wooden building while gazing into the distance with the New York Times tagline: Pioneertown Wants to be the Old West.

Keywords

old west

rugged

WILD

A wide-angle view of the sandy unpaved main street of Pioneertown, lined with wooden buildings with porches and scrubby plants in wood troughs.

An open room with exposed beams, swag-styled string lights hanging from the ceiling, and picnic tables with blankets, and an unfinished dirt floor.

Entry

The space includes an outdoor makeshift lobby that offers few amenities aside from morning coffee, Wi-Fi and a parking space large enough for a pickup truck outside each room’s door.

A parking lot across the street was built as a film set with an old-fashioned saloon, post office, bowling alley and a trading post.

New York Times

“Pioneertown is having something of a renaissance, thanks to an influx of artists, entrepreneurs and other beautiful people from Los Angeles, Silicon Valley and New York City looking for a new hub for work and play.”

A small room with an exposed wood beam ceiling, two southwest style rugs, a circular ceiling light, and two nightstands on either side of the bed.

A walkway through a yard of scattered stones to a large building with a curtained entrance, where a cactus stands next to a water pump outside at sunset.

“Pioneertown is an unincorporated community, so small that you can address parcels with someone’s first name and they will arrive at the right place. You can drive for miles without seeing another human or even a building; people’s homes can be about a 10-minute drive apart. The boulders, the sand and the Joshua trees make the landscape look otherworldly.”