Ojai Valley Inn

Most evenings, as the sun drops behind the western hills, the bluffs of the Topatopa range at the eastern end of the valley turn pink for a few minutes. Locals call it the Pink Moment. The Ojai Valley Inn has been watching it since 1923, when the glass manufacturer Edward Drummond Libbey opened a golf clubhouse here, designed by the young Wallace Neff, in the hills of Ventura County.

History

Libbey, whose glass works in Toledo, Ohio, had made him rich, wintered in Ojai and became its great patron. After a fire in 1917 he paid for much of the town's Spanish Colonial Revival rebuilding, including the arcade and the post office tower on Ojai Avenue. For his country club he engaged Neff, who would become one of the favoured architects of Hollywood's stars, and the golf architect George C. Thomas Jr., whose course still threads through the oaks.

In the 1930s the club grew into a resort, and its distance from Los Angeles made it a discreet retreat for film people. Frank Capra used the valley as a setting for Shangri-La in Lost Horizon in 1937, and the association has stayed with the town. During the Second World War the armed forces took over the property for training and as a rest centre, and it reopened to guests after the war.

Architecture and design

Neff's clubhouse set the style for everything that followed: white walls, red tile roofs, arcades and courtyards in the Spanish Colonial Revival manner. Later additions, including the guest wings and the spa, have kept to the same idiom, so that the resort reads as a village of low buildings scattered across the grounds rather than a single hotel block. Old oaks, lavender and gardens fill the spaces in between.

Rooms and suites

Rooms and suites are spread across the property, many with balconies or patios facing the golf course or the mountains. Some of the larger suites sit in their own cottages, with fireplaces for the cool valley nights.

Dining

Olivella, the resort's Italian dining room, is the most formal of its restaurants. The Farmhouse is a culinary centre where guests take cookery classes, and the kitchens draw on the resort's own herb gardens and on the citrus and avocado farms of the valley.

Wellness

Spa Ojai, built as a small Spanish village around a courtyard and pool, counts among the largest resort spas in California, and its treatments use lavender grown on the property. The Thomas golf course, restored in the late twentieth century, is a draw in its own right, alongside tennis and several swimming pools.

Weddings and events

The lawns, terraces and ballrooms host weddings, and the resort is a long-established choice for Southern California company retreats, with meeting rooms set apart from the guest areas.

Location

Ojai lies in a narrow east-west valley about 25 kilometres inland from Ventura and roughly two hours by road north-west of central Los Angeles. The name is usually traced to a Chumash word for moon. The town's arcade, bookshops and galleries are a few minutes from the inn, and Lake Casitas lies over the hills to the west. As a luxury resort in the Ojai Valley, it has the advantage of the setting to itself. Santa Barbara Airport is about an hour away by car, Los Angeles International a little under two hours, and the nearest Amtrak station is in Ventura.