Cool in clarksdale

A creative twist on a hotel combines creativity and comfort at the Crossroads.

- BOYCE UPHOLT

Being dubbed a “cool” town can be as much a burden as a blessing, especially when what you really are is a cool small town. A road-tripping wanderer might hear a bit of buzz and drift in with the wrong expectations.

Chuck Rutledge and Ann Williams, the couple who helped launch the Travelers Hotel—a 21-room, cooperatively owned boutique hotel that opened last year—have met visitors who believed there would be blues blaring from every open doorway in downtown Clarksdale, as if this were Beale Street or Bourbon Street expanded into a whole Mississippi Delta town.

“How do we educate travelers to slow down and quit worrying about checking stuff off the list and actually experience a place?” Rutledge wonders. The Travelers Hotel is part of their answer.

Rutledge, who grew up in Clarksdale, had been contemplating building an artist-owned bed and breakfast in New Orleans—a space where creative people could live on-site, earning their keep by working part-time while still leaving time for their own pursuits. He remembered that his friend Bubba O’Keefe, a local developer, had long been talking about the need for a hotel in downtown Clarksdale.