Dudler's Inn

Joseph Dudler ran the roadhouse where the toll road met the valley. A carpenter by trade and brewer by calling, he settled Parley's Hollow about 1864 and built a two-story inn dug into the hillside — rooms to let upstairs, saloon below — catching the traffic coming down the canyon. His Philadelphia Brewery, added in 1870, made him saloon keeper to Salt Lake City and later Park City. Dudler died in 1897; the inn burned in 1952. Its foundation stones still sit in Parley's Historic Nature Park, passed daily by dogs and their walkers.

What the plaque says

Perhaps one of the longest living and prominent residents of the area, known as Parley’s Hollow, now officially Parley’s Historic Nature Park, was Joseph Dudler. About 1864, he settled in this location. Here he built his home. It was two stories, thirty-six by fifty-six feet in size, with rock foundation walls, the narrow front facing south, and the rest of the ground floor dug into the side of the valley. The remains of a rock wall, east of the still existing foundation stones of the original building, is a continuation of the front wall of the lower floor of his Inn. The story above was frame with vertical siding, and it was here that the “Rooms To Let,” dining, and kitchen spaces were provided. As business improved, in 1870, he built a brewery to the rear and west of the Inn. To provide further for this, he built an addition to the Inn itself, continuing the rock foundations further north sixteen feet with an adobe instead of frame upper story. In addition, he continued the lower floor north, only four feet further in the ground, with what has been called the “Wine Cellar.” Still there, it is a rock-walled room, underground, about fifteen-and-a-half feet wide and twenty feet long with a ten-foot high, domed, rock ceiling. It is an ideal place for keeping things cool. His irrigation water supply was brought to the site in a ditch from Parley’s Canyon Creek, but for drinking water he used a spring on the property northeast of the Inn location which is still flowing. Dudler operated a saloon or two in town as well as at the Inn, and in 1892, added a similar business in Park City where he also continued in the brewing and saloon business. He kept the farm and brewery area going in Parley’s Hollow until his death in October of 1897. His descendants continued using the Inn as a residence, referring to it as the “homestead” until it was destroyed by fire, the work of vandals, the night of the 17th of October, 1952.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• This Is The Place Heritage Park — 2.9 mi
  A living history village at the mouth of Emigration Canyon
• Emigration Canyon — 3.6 mi
  The final stretch of trail the Mormon pioneers took into the valley
• Natural History Museum of Utah — 3.7 mi
  A world-class museum built into the foothills above Salt Lake City
• Gilgal Sculpture Garden — 4.0 mi
  A surreal and eccentric sculpture garden hidden in a residential neighborhood

More markers nearby

• Dudler's Wine Cellar — steps away
• Sandstone Wall & Aqueduct — steps away
• Willard Richards — 0.3 mi
• The Overland Stage — 0.3 mi