Christmas Season Room With a View: Hotel Vendome, Prescott, Arizona

[Photo: View of downtown Prescott, Arizona from second story room of historic Hotel Vendome]

The Hotel Vendome (www.vendomehotel.com) is a quiet, quaint little hotel in historic downtown Prescott, which is a small mountain city in the central Arizona highlands. 

[Photo: Hotel Vendome at Christmas, Prescott, Arizona]

Lovingly restored by its present owners, the Vendome was built in 1917 and so is one of the oldest buildings in Prescott, a town with a very colorful Wild West history. Cowboy silent film star Tom Mix used to stay at the hotel for a year at a time while making some of his films. 

[Photo: Christmas light display on Courthouse Square, Prescott]

Courthouse Plaza (universally called Courthouse Square by locals) gets decked out in a dazzling light display during the holidays, to help cement Prescott's claim as "Arizona's Christmas Capital". 

[Photo: Yavapai County Courthouse with Christmas lights, Prescott, Arizona]

At an elevation of 5,300 feet / 1,615 meters, Prescott is a "mile high city" off the beaten track of the Interstate highways, midway between the desert city of Phoenix and the high country of Flagstaff. 

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© Copyright 2012 Stephen J. Krieg

Arizona Mountain Christmas Tree

Along the winding curves of Highway 89A between Jerome and the Prescott Valley in Arizona's central highlands is this lone juniper tree growing along the side of the road. With the sharp curves and competing views of the slopes of Mingus Mountain, the tree can be easy to miss. 

I had been driving up the mountain from the Prescott Valley on a relatively balmy late December day, so I was in shorts and sandals. Passersby did a double take over a photographer in shorts, then the Christmas tree, in the middle of nowhere.

It has a wide variety of very nice Christmas decorations, some with lights (nowhere to plug them in on this lonely stretch of road on the Prescott National Forest, though!).

One recent addition in March 2012 was contributed by a family from Australia that was traveling around the western U.S.

Seemingly this has been an ongoing collaborative effort. There is a blog post with a picture of it from 2009, with a comment claiming to have seen it ten years before then. 

Mingus Mountain Scenic Road, Highway 89A, Yavapai County, Arizona.

Christmas Lights, Courthouse Square

[Photo: Christmas Lights display, Prescott, Arizona]

Yavapai County Courthouse, Prescott, Arizona. First snow of the winter season adds greatly to the festivity of the holiday season. Besides the courthouse itself, the elm trees on the square are wrapped with colorful strings of lights.