John Dillinger - FBI's Public Enemy #1

John Dillinger was one of America's most notorious outlaws of the Great Depression era. During a violent crime spree across the Midwest in the early 1930s, Dillinger and his gang became known for a series of bank robberies, prison escapes, and encounters with law enforcement. His notoriety made him one of the country's most wanted criminals and earned him the title “Public Enemy No. 1.”

On January 9, 1934, Dillinger and two members of his gang checked into The Gardner while passing through El Paso. Dillinger registered under the name John D. Ball and stayed in Room 221.

According to then-Sheriff Chris Fox, Dillinger committed no crimes during his stay in El Paso, giving local authorities no reason to arrest him. He checked out a few days later and continued west.

On January 25, 1934, Dillinger was captured in Tucson, Arizona. Just months later, his highly publicized run from authorities came to an end in Chicago.

Room 221 is still part of The Gardner today, connecting the hotel — and today's guests — to one of the most infamous figures of the 1930s.

Cormac McCarthy

Cormac McCarthy, one of America's most celebrated novelists, called El Paso home for many years and lived and stayed at the Gardner Hotel at various times throughout the 1970s and 1980s. His time here overlaps with the period surrounding his work on Blood Meridian, and he later mentioned the Gardner Hotel by name in several of his books.

One of the hotel's most intriguing literary connections involves The Road. In an interview with The Guardian, McCarthy recalled staying in an El Paso hotel with his young son when he awoke in the middle of the night, looked out over the city, and began imagining what El Paso might look like decades in the future — an idea that would eventually help inspire The Road

Guardian interview -"Four or five years ago, my son (John, then aged three or four) and I went to El Paso, (in Texas) and we checked into the old hotel there. And one night, John was asleep, it was probably about two in the morning, and I went over and just stood and looked out the window at this town. There was nothing moving but I could hear the trains going through, a very lonesome sound. I just had this image of what this town might look like in 50 or 100 years… fires up on the hill and everything being laid to waste, and I thought a lot about my little boy. So I wrote two pages. And then about four years later I realized that it wasn't two pages of a book, it was a book, and it was about that man, and that boy.'

Published in 2006, The Road went on to win the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Netflix's Longmire

Gardner Hotel mentioned in Craig Johnson's 2018 novel "The Depth of Winter", the main character, a modern Wyoming Sheriff named Walt Longmire who is searching for his daughter that has been kidnapped to Mexico, stays in and then escapes from the Gardner Hotel in El Paso on his way to Mexico to find her. Longmire stays in room 221 at the Gardner.  Several pages in the book take place in the Gardner Hotel.  It also mentions the John Dillinger gang staying there on a cold, wet evening in 1934, before later being caught and arrested in Tucson. Quite likely the author either visited or stayed in the Gardner while researching sites for his book to take place.  Craig Johnson's 14 best selling novels (with more on the way) about Wyoming Sheriff Walt Longmire were made into a very popular 6 season series on Netflix called "Longmire".

The Netflix series characters and stories differ somewhat from the novels. 

One of the more recent novels included the main character staying in room #221 and then escaping from the Gardner Hotel via the roof from those trying to prevent him from going to Mexico to rescue his daughter.  Unfortunately this particular novel is not included in the Netflix series stories, which ended about the time this novel was written.

Glory Road

Glory Road is a 2006 American sports drama film directed by James Gartner, based on a true story surrounding the events leading to the 1966 NCAA University Division Basketball Championship. Don Haskins portrayed by Josh Lucas, head coach of Texas Western College (now known as University of Texas at El Paso or UTEP), coached a team with an all-black starting lineup, a first in NCAA history. Glory Road explores racism, discrimination, and student athletics.

Several scenes from Glory Road were filmed at the Gardner Hotel in 2004.