NO ONE AT CHAMA’S Iron Rail Inn seems to be in a hurry. A hunter at the bar is deep in conversation with a hiker fresh off the Continental Divide Trail. Out on the patio, friends are working through panini and a round of tequila. A crew from the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad winds down after a six-hour-and-20-minute run to Osier, Colorado, and back.
Upstairs, the game room pool table is built from reclaimed railroad ties, elk mounts survey the room from deep green walls, and hours disappear in a blink. Occasionally, a whiff of coal dust drifts through the window. Then the whistle blows. The railroad is right where it has been, just across the street, since 1880.
Back then, the Iron Rail housed Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad workers. It was rebuilt after a fire sometime before 1905 (ashes are still visible in the crawl space). The building has lived plenty of lives since: It became the Shamrock Hotel (you can still see the relief shamrocks in the exterior stucco), housed a barbershop and a medical clinic, and finally settled into life as the Chama Hotel & Shops.
That’s how Robert and Suzanne Jorgenson found the place shortly after retiring from their Arizona manufactured-home business and moving to Chama. While he saw an aging hotel with green carpet and an overcrowded lobby, she saw a landmark worth saving. The Jorgensons bought it in 2023 and immediately began restorations. “Every layer we peeled back revealed 10 more things underneath,” says their daughter Leah Armendariz.
Stay in one of 15 rooms at the Iron Rail Inn.
Photograph courtesy of the Iron Rail Inn.
After removing three layers of flooring revealed the original oak, the family spent weeks sanding more than 6,000 square feet back to life. “Once we saw that craftsmanship still hiding there,” Armendariz says, “we knew we had a responsibility to do the building justice.”
Investigating damaged stucco, they discovered the exterior walls were built of horizontally stacked railroad ties. Rather than cover them up, they exposed a section upstairs so guests can see what holds the place together. “We wanted every part of the building to honor its connection to the railroad and to Chama itself,” Armendariz says.
The 15 rooms keep that early-1900s feel with black iron bed frames, refinished antique writing desks, pull-chain fixtures, and tall casement windows that swing open to let the mountain air in. The bar pours more than 50 whiskeys and tequilas under a liquor license carried over from Chama’s former High Country Saloon.
A California transplant, Tim Ruiz has been coming in for 30 years. “I was worried they’d ruin it,” he says of the new owners. “They didn’t. They made it top shelf—best place in town.”
When the Iron Rail opened during Chama Days in August 2025, the Jorgensons committed to operating the inn year-round. The town has responded with stories of haircuts in the old barbershop and relatives who worked there decades ago. One man walked in carrying a lamp from 1921 that he’d claimed while working at the hotel years earlier. “I felt like I had to bring this back to you,” he told them. Some things just belong where they started.
