The Marathon Motel is a survivor of the auto court, the form American roadside lodging took before the motel chains arrived: a low run of cabins around an open court, built for people coming in by car on a two lane highway. It went up in 1940, half a mile west of Marathon on what is now US 90, and it went through the same century as every other independent motor court on a road the interstates drew traffic away from. Wim Wenders filmed it in the autumn of 1983 for Paris, Texas, and it is not a background: it is the motel Travis and Walt stay in, and the tall neon sign reading MOTEL that stands beside the highway today is the sign in the picture. The film reached cinemas in 1984 and took the Palme d'Or.
By 1987 the motel was close to being condemned. It was pulled back over nearly forty years by successive owners, a retired couple who spent thirteen years restoring it one room at a time, then a later owner who built the courtyard and the gardens and had the neon put right. What has given it a second reason to exist is the sky. Marathon sits inside the Greater Big Bend International Dark Sky Reserve, certified in 2022 and, at more than fifteen thousand square miles, the largest of its kind when it was named. The motel keeps three acres of its own ground as a sky park for stargazing and astrophotography.
Getting there
30.2090, -103.2541
Locations are approximate and may be inaccurate, on private land, or otherwise inaccessible. Check before you travel.
Hear it from the road
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