Kubrick's Overlook Hotel is a composite, and the seam runs right down the middle of it. The building you see from the outside — snowbound, gabled, alone on a mountainside — is Timberline Lodge on the south slope of Mount Hood, Oregon. The moment a character walks through the door they are in Hertfordshire, on a soundstage at EMI Elstree Studios.
This is worth knowing before you visit, because Timberline disappoints people who arrive expecting the Colorado Lounge or the hedge maze. Neither has ever existed there. What Timberline gives you instead is the exact silhouette of the establishing shots, and a building with a genuinely remarkable history of its own.
A Depression-era public works project
Timberline was built between 1936 and 1938 by the Works Progress Administration, one of the New Deal's employment programmes, at around 6,000 feet on Mount Hood. Out-of-work carpenters, stonemasons, blacksmiths and weavers made the building and almost everything in it by hand: the newel posts were carved from cedar utility poles, the ironwork was forged on site, the furnishings were woven from repurposed uniforms and blankets.
Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicated it in September 1938. It has been a National Historic Landmark since 1977 and remains a working hotel and ski area, which is why the exterior in the film looks lived-in rather than dressed — it was.
Why the Overlook's haunted room is 237
In Stephen King's novel the room is 217. Timberline asked Kubrick to change it. The lodge's concern was straightforwardly commercial: room 217 was a real room that guests would have to be booked into afterwards, and management feared no one would take it once the film came out.
Kubrick agreed and chose 237 — a number that does not correspond to any room at Timberline, so no guest could be given the haunted one. The irony is complete. Room 217 is now among the most requested rooms in the building, and the change did precisely nothing to protect it.
What was shot where
Timberline supplies the exterior establishing shots of the Overlook, including the aerial approaches and the snowbound stills of the hotel in isolation. The production also shot some exterior coverage on the mountain.
The interiors — the Colorado Lounge, the Gold Room, the corridors Danny rides his tricycle down, the bathroom of room 237, the kitchen, the caretaker's apartment — were all sets at EMI Elstree Studios near London, several of them built to unusually complete specifications so Kubrick could shoot in any direction. The hedge maze was also an Elstree construction, with a large-scale model used for the overhead shots. There is no maze at Timberline and never has been.
The film's opening sequence, the yellow Volkswagen winding up through mountains, is a third location again: it was shot in Montana and Glacier National Park, on and around the Going-to-the-Sun Road. The closing aerial of that sequence — the camera lifting away over a lake — is also Montana, not Oregon.
Visiting a hotel that is proud of the wrong thing
Timberline's staff have had forty-five years of Shining questions and handle them with good humour, but the lodge does not lean into the film the way, say, the Stanley Hotel in Colorado does. There is no maze installed for tourists, no axe in the lobby. The building presents itself as what it is: a hand-built WPA landmark that happens to have been photographed by Stanley Kubrick.
The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, incidentally, is the hotel King actually stayed in and based the novel on — and it appears in the dataset of this site as the location for a very different film, Dumb and Dumber. Kubrick never shot there.
Visiting the location
- Where
- Timberline Lodge, Timberline Road, Government Camp, Oregon.
- Getting there
- About 90 minutes east of Portland by car via US-26, then six miles up Timberline Road. The road is ploughed in winter but chains or snow tyres are often required.
- Access
- Open year-round as a working hotel, restaurant and ski area. Day visitors are welcome in the public rooms at no charge; you do not need to be staying to walk in and look.
- Approach from the road below for the film's silhouette — the aerial shots read best from a distance, not from the car park.
- Ask at the front desk about the WPA craftwork; the hand-forged ironwork and carved posts are the real reason the building is a landmark.
- Room 217 exists and can be booked, but it is popular and looks nothing like the film's set.
- Winter gives you the snow of the film; summer gives you a functioning glacier ski area and wildflowers on the same slope.
Frequently asked questions
Can you stay at the hotel from The Shining?
You can stay at Timberline Lodge, which provides the Overlook's exterior. The interiors you remember from the film were sets in England, so no room in the building resembles them.
Is there a hedge maze at Timberline Lodge?
No. The maze was built as a set at EMI Elstree Studios outside London, with a model used for the overhead shots. Timberline has never had one.
Why is the room number 237 instead of 217?
Timberline asked for the change. Room 217 is a real room at the lodge and management worried guests would refuse it after the film. Kubrick substituted 237, a number that matches no room in the building.
Where was the opening drive in The Shining filmed?
In Montana, largely on the Going-to-the-Sun Road in Glacier National Park — not in Oregon or Colorado.