John and Lena Dratter built the original structure at the corner of Zion Park Blvd in 1947. John had worked the coal mines in Price long enough to save the money, and he bought a 120-foot building from the abandoned Topaz internment camp in Delta, reassembled it in Springdale, and opened just in time for the summer season. The Dratters called it the Zion Rest Motel. It sat at the entrance to one of the most dramatic national parks in the country.
In 1978, Larry and Rebecca McKown bought the property and renamed it Flanigan's, after the pioneer family that had settled the canyon in the 1870s. The McKowns rebuilt, expanded, and built a spa into the hillside. Their second generation now runs the daily operation. The compound includes the inn rooms, a full spa, an on-site café, and a nature trail that climbs the canyon wall directly behind the property — the kind of amenity that exists because the owners live in Springdale and know what the land behind the motel can offer. In 1996, Larry McKown let a former Pennsylvania math teacher named Rick Praetzel store outfitting equipment in a basement room if he cleaned it out first. That basement became Zion Adventure Company.
At 450 Zion Park Blvd, Flanigan's is the institutional inn at the canyon entrance — not the newest, not the flashiest, but the one that has been there longer than most of the other buildings on the boulevard and is still run by the same family that renovated it in the eighties.