Stargazer Inn

About Stargazer Inn

Baker, Nevada sits at the end of a spur road off US Route 50, the stretch that earned its nickname as the Loneliest Road in America. It is the last town before Great Basin National Park, home to Wheeler Peak, the Lehman Caves, groves of bristlecone pines among the oldest living things on Earth, and skies so dark the Milky Way throws a shadow. For years the town had a general store and a place to sleep, but little that felt like a reason to stop rather than a place to pass through. The Stargazer Inn changed that. A seven-room inn wrapped around the Bristlecone General Store and a seasonal cafe and bar, it is an older roadside property brought back with real care, run by owners who understand that in a town this small, one good place to stay is the whole difference.

What Stargazer Inn Is Known For

What the Stargazer does better than anywhere else is simply be the good option in a place that has almost none. Baker has a population you could count in an afternoon, and the difference between a trip to Great Basin that works and one that does not often comes down to whether there is a clean bed, a hot meal, and a store within walking distance when you roll in after dark. The Stargazer is all three, held together by owners who took an old roadside inn and gave it back its dignity. Reviewers reach for the same word again and again: gem. In a town this small, at the edge of a park this grand, that is exactly what it is.

Amenities

• Pets Welcome
• WiFi
• Bristlecone General Store on-site
• Seasonal cafe and bar
• Garden patio
• In-room kitchenettes in select rooms
• Some of the darkest night skies in the Lower 48
• Parking steps from every room

The Room

Seven rooms and a couple of cabins, each with a queen bed, a private bathroom with a shower, and quiet heating and cooling for the desert swing between hot afternoons and cold high-altitude nights. Several rooms have a kitchenette for travelers who arrive with groceries, since the nearest full grocery is a long drive in any direction. The rooms are small and honest, the walls are close, and the whole place has been upgraded piece by piece rather than gutted and made generic. What you get is a clean, comfortable, well-kept room with a point of view, a few steps from the store and the cafe, with a parking spot right outside the door. Step out after dark and the sky does the rest.

The Grounds

The inn, the Bristlecone General Store, and the cafe share a single walkable compound in the middle of Baker, connected by a sidewalk and a backyard garden patio. Parking sits steps from the rooms. The general store, open daily, is the practical heart of it: coffee, cold drinks, supplies, and the things you forgot to pack before the park. The garden patio is where guests land in the evening with a plate from the cafe or a drink from the bar, watching the light drop behind the Snake Range. There are no crowds here and no traffic to speak of. When the sun goes down, the reason the place is named what it is becomes obvious overhead.

The Experience

People come to Baker for one of two reasons, the park or the sky, and often both. Days go to Wheeler Peak, the Lehman Caves, and the bristlecone groves up the road. Evenings come back to the patio, a plate of small dishes from the cafe when it is open, a glass of wine, and the resident cats making their rounds. Then the dark arrives, and it is a different kind of dark than most travelers have ever stood under: no towns, no highway glow, the whole Milky Way laid out horizon to horizon. Guests tend to describe the Stargazer the way people describe a place that surprised them, an older motel in a tiny town that turned out to be exactly the right base for one of the emptiest and most beautiful corners of the West.

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Things to Do Near the Great Basin