Wolf Creek Tavern was a refuge for Hollywood stars episode artwork

EPISODE · Feb 6, 2026 · 8 MIN

Wolf Creek Tavern was a refuge for Hollywood stars

from Offbeat Oregon History podcast · host Finn J.D. John

THERE WERE TIMES, during Hollywood’s golden age, when Clark Gable simply couldn’t be found anywhere. Studio executives would search frantically for the top-shelf star, needing to talk to him about a project and facing a tight deadline. He’d be gone. In fact, he’d be fly-fishing on the Rogue River in Oregon, while staying in a small inn that today is the oldest continually operating hotel in the entire Pacific Northwest: The Wolf Creek Tavern. Clark wasn’t the only Hollywood bigshot in on the secret, either. The Wolf Creek Tavern was a regular place of refuge for a bunch of Golden Age Hollywood stars, including Carole Lombard, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Mary Pickford, Orson Welles, and even John Wayne. Also, if you are more of a literature buff, Sinclair Lewis’s name is also on the guest register, and Jack London was a regular and did quite a bit of writing there. With his wife, Charmian Kittredge London, he holed up in a tiny little garret-like room over the hotel’s front porch for several weeks in 1912 to put the finishing touches on the manuscript for The Valley of the Moon.... (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/2411a1004a.wolf-creek-tavern-674.068.html)

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