Clark Lyda remembers coming to the Stagecoach Inn as a child, as far back as 1967. On road trips from Austin, his family would pull off Interstate 35 in Salado and follow Main Street to the stately old white wood-frame building that housed the inn’s popular restaurant, where they would join the line to wait for a table. There were no menus; waitresses who’d worked at the Stagecoach for decades would recite the prix fixe options in monotone—tomato aspic, hush puppies, chicken-fried steak, strawberry kiss. Not that anyone needed a menu; many of the diners had been coming for decades themselves. Lyda, who grew up to be a commercial developer in Austin, reconnected with his past in 2015 when he, along with partners Austin Pfiester and David Hays, bought the Stagecoach, closing both the inn and the restaurant for a top-to–bottom revamping. They brought in Austin-based La Corsha Hospitality, which has been responsible for breathing life into grande dame hotels across the state, including the Driskill, in Austin; the Stoneleigh, in Dallas; and the Hotel Settles, in Big Spring. Lyda recalled his childhood memories on an August afternoon in the restaurant’s cheerily elegant Sun Room, one of its many dining areas, occasionally looking over at a table that he and his mom often sat at when it was just the two of them. In the adjacent bar room, an oil painting of a field of bluebonnets hung above a handsome stone fireplace, and books about Texas art adorned a tufted leather ottoman and filled dark wood shelves. Windows looked out onto a centuries-old oak tree rising out of a small courtyard next to the bar. The restaurant reopened last summer as part of the property’s two-phase renovation. All across the six-acre grounds, dozens of workers hustled about, putting the finishing touches on the 48 hotel rooms and a new pool bar, which were set to finally open just days later.

The pork chop entree. Photographs by Wynn Myers Dion’s Room, one of the dining areas, is named after former owner Dion Van Bibber. Left: The pork chop entree. Photographs by Wynn Myers Right: Dion’s Room, one of the dining areas, is named after former owner Dion Van Bibber.

Tall and thin as a reed, Lyda attacked a chicken-fried steak as he recounted the saga that had brought him and the hotel together. The Stagecoach was one of the oldest continuously operating hotels in Texas when he bought it, but it had fallen deep into disrepair in the intervening years. Originally opened as the Shady Villa Hotel, in 1861, the property is said to have hosted guests like Sam Houston, Robert E. Lee, and Jesse James; it was, quite literally, a stagecoach stop along the Chisholm Trail. In 1943 a local couple named Dion and Ruth Van Bibber bought and renovated the inn and gave it its current name. Ruth wanted to build a sort of Texas tearoom, so she created what would become the restaurant’s iconic dishes: the tomato aspic, served with a dollop of mayonnaise and a caper, and the strawberry kiss, a mountain of ice cream and baked meringue draped in oozy strawberry sauce. Over the decades, the hotel and restaurant expanded. Additional dining rooms sprouted off the original building, and motel-style quarters were built behind it. Meanwhile, Salado thrived too. Art galleries opened on Main Street. A high-end boutique owned by former fashion model Grace Jones (not the singer and Bond girl) drew society matrons from as far away as New York and Washington, D.C. They’d dine in Ruth’s restaurant alongside women who lived on the ranches that sprawled across the surrounding countryside. “It wasn’t fancy then,” Lyda recalled. “It was just gracious. You felt like you were someplace back in time.” Illustration by Christopher Delorenzo Up Next: The Baker Another grand hotel will soon get the La Corsha treatment: the fourteen-story Baker Hotel, in Mineral Wells, the state’s first skyscraper outside of a city. It has been closed since 1972. That was the golden age, but when the Van Bibbers retired, the property began to decline. In 2000 the family sold the Stagecoach to Morris Foster, a former Exxon executive who had grown up in Salado. And then construction began on the widening of I-35, making it difficult for travelers to get to the town. “The construction dragged on for so long and was such a nightmare that people thought Salado was no more,” said village administrator Don Ferguson. The inn, which changed hands again, became little more than a highway stop for truckers, with a country and western bar, and, in Lyda’s words, “inedible” food, and guest rooms that were practically “unoccupiable.” Then, three years ago, Lyda, who has a long track record of development projects around Central Texas, spotted an opportunity and purchased the Stagecoach. The hotel renovation took longer than planned. The buildings that housed the guest rooms were in far worse shape than anyone had imagined, with thin walls, open wires running through attics, and five types of air conditioners, none of which worked. The rooms in the refurbished hotel, which officially reopened Labor Day weekend, belie their run-down past. The decor feels like a Southwestern update on mid-century ranch-house style, with Naugahyde daybeds, Saltillo tile floors, and handmade sconces from Clayworks, in Austin. A swimming pool anchors the back half of the property, and a forest of new vegetation creates a lush, almost tropical barrier against the highway just beyond.

The bar at the Stagecoach Inn. Photographs by Wynn Myers A guest room at the Stagecoach Inn. Left: The bar at the Stagecoach Inn. Photographs by Wynn Myers Right: A guest room at the Stagecoach Inn.