The 1897 Iron Gate Inn

David Thorley built the house at 100 N 200 W in 1897 for his wife and family — one of the substantial homes of early Cedar City, with original fireplace, floors, doors, and windows that are still intact. The Thorley family held the property until the 1960s. C.R. and Susan Wooten bought it in 1996, began renovations in 2000, and turned it into a bed and breakfast. In May 2015, Donna Shattuck-Johnson and her husband Brian acquired the inn, drawn to it as guests who had stayed there and fell in love with the building.

The Iron Gate Inn runs seven guest rooms, each with period furnishings calibrated to the late-Victorian-era fabric of the building without tipping into parody. Cedar City is a college town with a world-class Shakespeare Festival and a working-class history in iron and coal, and the 1897 house sits in that history unambiguously — it pre-dates the Festival by more than four decades. City Beat News has given the inn five consecutive Spectrum Awards for Customer Satisfaction, which is the kind of recognition that accumulates only through years of consistent guest experience.

For visitors to Cedar City who want a room with a context — the actual built history of an Iron County town that has been here since before Utah was a state — the Iron Gate Inn is the obvious address.