Paxton Hotel

In January, I spent two lunch hours in Parowan, painting the historic Paxton Hotel. I know it was lunch hour because a line of high schoolers skirted my painting station both days on their way home to lunch and then back to school. I loved the wood detail at the peak of the roof, the shadow it cast, and the subtle color changes in the yellow bricks.

I went in search of the building because a friend of mine told me that five generations of women in her family had owned and operated it as a hotel beginning in 1905. Her great great grandfather was Moroni Alexander Orton. He had a bad heart, so he and her great great grandmother, Ida Maria Orton, decided to build the hotel so that she would have a source of income if he were to die. He did die in 1910 at the age of 42, so the decision was sound.

He great great grandmother leased the building and supported her family until she remarried a man named Anthony Paxton and they moved back to Parowan to run the business. My friend’s grandmother, Cleone Johnson Rowley remembers being in charge of folding the laundry as a young girl along with her great great grandmother. Five generations of Parowan women owned, managed, and helped run the property until it was sold in the 1950s.