At El Cosmico, the sky is limitless

MARFA El Cosmico in Marfa is one of Liz Lambert’s latest lodging projects.

In some circles, the phrase, "Liz Lambert’s lodging project" would be enough to sell anyone on its value.

For the most part, Odessa isn’t one of those circles, but Lambert, a 1981 graduate of Permian High, is widely credited with being one of the major forces sparking the growth of Austin’s South Congress ("SoCo") district from a land of crack addicts and prostitutes to the thriving domain of clothing stores and ironically self-aware restaurants swarming with young hipsters.

Lambert earned a law degree from the University of Texas and worked in the Manhattan District Attorney’s office before moving back and working for the Texas Attorney General’s office.

"I was looking for a way to do something other than practice law," Lambert said.

So in 1995, back when it was still seedy, she bought the "really affordable" 60-year-old Hotel San Jose in Austin’s South Congress area and started remodeling room by room. In 1998, she closed it down completely for major remodeling before reopening in 2000.

"Everything started to change in that time," Lambert said. The insult "Your momma works on South Congress" no longer carried a pejorative.

Anyway, that’s all well-established lore, and the process is covered in Lambert’s documentary "The Last Days of the San Jose." The success allowed Lambert and her company Bunkhouse Management to work on other projects such as St. Cecilia in Austin, Hotel Havana in San Antonio and the Thunderbird Hotel and El Cosmico, both in Marfa.

One of these things is not like the other, and El Cosmico is not a renovation project. It’s a campground with remodeled 1950s trailers surrounded by safari tents, yurts and a tepee sitting on 18 acres of land adjacent to the Marfa Sector Border Patrol station and within spitting distance of the Chinati Foundation’s art museum established by Donald Judd.

Lambert said she bought it as empty pasture and after years of getting the infrastructure installed and main office built, they were able to open to lodgers in November with five trailers. Lambert said they hope to add 15 trailers (she has a friend who’s a "vagabond aficionado") in the next year as well as many more tents.

This whole thing probably makes little sense to most Odessa American readers, especially since the trailers range in price from $90 to $125 per night, unless you have more than two people, in which case the price goes up $15 per person.

You’re probably saying, "I could get a fancy hotel room for that." And you don’t even know that the trailers lack air-conditioning beyond opening the windows.

But in many ways, that’s entirely missing the point.

"You have to realize it’s a campground," El Cosmico general manager Sarah Cork, 28, said. "The trailers are great, but it’s still fancy camping."

Indeed, the tents and tent spaces are $60 and $20 respectively but would still suffer from direct value comparisons to, say, Motel 6. And that’s the wrong approach.

When I grew up, the Johnson family had a gigantic 1950s travel-trailer parked at a piece of land on Oak Creek Lake, near Sweetwater. It had to have been 60 feet long, and also didn’t have a working air-conditioner.

While El Cosmico trailers are much nicer and the beds are incredibly comfortable, I myself couldn’t imagine paying that much of my own money to stay in them. But that’s because my enjoyment is primarily nostalgic rather than novel. That is to say, I recognize it and get a feeling a warm fuzziness rather than the electric awe of something new.

Cork said people come for many different reasons, such as the Chinati Foundation, a base to check out the Big Bend area or to get inspired (especially photographers).

"Some people come because they just want to get away," said Cork, who moved from Austin to Marfa to manage El Cosmico.

The nearest Walmart is 90 minutes away in Fort Stockton, and Marfa as yet is mostly free of the touch of franchises and most things, generally.

"I’ve never seen a sky so big," Lisa Kilian, 27, said, remarking on what is, seriously, one of the biggest draws of El Cosmico.

Kilian is from Portland, Ore., and she and her friend Laura Leon, a 29-year-old hobbyist photographer, had eight days to drive through California, Arizona, Texas and back to Oregon as they camped with their two dogs. In the same way tourists stare up at Manhattan skyscrapers or ride subways for fun, the desolate nothing of West Texas can be shocking.

This, in fact, is what people are paying to see and do.

A couple from Palo Alto, Calif., flew to El Paso and then drove to Marfa. She was pursuing a second master’s, he a music career while employed as a high school teacher. These well-educated, relatively well-off people had heard from friends Marfa was a cool, weird place.

"One of my writing teachers had done a fellowship of some kind here and had nice things to say about it," Macy Parker, 27, said.

Compared to international vacationing, this place was near, cheap and it avoided the paternal hang-ups of staying in a coastal resort town, surrounded by invisible, indigenous grinding poverty.

"You feel a little more OK coming here," Ben Griggs, 29, said.

While it’s no longer acceptable to go to Haiti, say, and play at voodoo, it’s perfectly all right to come to Marfa and play at ’50s Americana, rustic, working-class life.

You aren’t paying in spite of the lack of amenities but because of it. The outdoor showers are awesome. It’s fun to shampoo your hair in the cool morning while you stand on a slab of raised concrete. It might not make sense in, say, Monahans, but it fits Marfa — or New Marfa, anyway.

Lambert has said the very idea is to allow for artistic inspiration. Getting hundreds or thousands of miles from home with nothing by sky and view removes a lot of distractions.

Lambert said that something about the wide-open spaces produces a lot of really good people in West Texas.

"You feel like anything is possible," Lambert said.

Even designing a lodge to put that feeling into other people.

Lodging options
>> What: Imperial Mansion trailer (1956).
>> Length: 45 feet.
>> Cost: $125 per night.

>> What: Vagabond trailer (1953).
>> Length: 35 feet.
>> Cost: $100 per night.

>> What: Royal Mansion trailer (1951).
>> Length: 35 feet.
>> Cost: $100 per night.

>> What: Kozy Coach trailer (1951).
>> Length: 27 feet.
>> Cost: $90 per night.

>> What: Branstrator trailer (1950).
>> Length: 27 feet.
>> Cost: $90 per night.

>> What: Tepee.
>> Size: 380 square feet.
>> Cost: $75 per night.

>> What: Yurts/safari tents.
>> Size: 115 square feet.
>> Cost: $75 per night.

>> What: Tent camping.
>> Cost: $20 per night per tent.