The best surf & design hotels · Big Sur & Carmel
Post Ranch Inn
The Post family homesteaded 160 acres of Big Sur cliffside in the 1860s — cattle, hogs, an apple orchard, and the first continuously operating post office on this stretch of coast. In the early 1980s, Billy Post and co-founder Mike Freed shook hands on the idea of converting the ranch into a hotel, sealed the deal with a shot of Jack Daniel's, and spent four years trying to find the right architect. An unknown local named Mickey Muennig submitted drawings for a treehouse. Freed hired him on the spot. Muennig spent two years doing nothing else — sleeping on the sites of future guest rooms to study the light, designing structures with no right angles, cantilevering rooms off the cliffs, covering roofs with grass and wildflowers so the buildings disappeared into the hillside. Post Ranch Inn opened in 1992 with thirty rooms, each named for the Post family or a Big Sur pioneer. Billy Post drove the excavator himself. He spent the rest of his days joining guests on the porch for breakfast.
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The hotel
The Design
Mickey Muennig had never designed a hotel. Post Ranch Inn is his only one. It is hard to imagine another architect making it.
Muennig's organic architecture starts from the premise that buildings in Big Sur should belong to the landscape rather than compete with it — rooms cantilevered over the cliffs, living roofs planted with native grasses, curved walls following the contours of the hillside. The Ocean Houses are nearly all glass, set at the cliff's edge twelve hundred feet above the Pacific. The Tree Houses sit nine feet off the ground, skylight above the bed to bring in the stars. No televisions anywhere on the property.
The Design
Mickey Muennig had never designed a hotel. Post Ranch Inn is his only one. It is hard to imagine another architect making it.
Muennig's organic architecture starts from the premise that buildings in Big Sur should belong to the landscape rather than compete with it — rooms cantilevered over the cliffs, living roofs planted with native grasses, curved walls following the contours of the hillside. The Ocean Houses are nearly all glass, set at the cliff's edge twelve hundred feet above the Pacific. The Tree Houses sit nine feet off the ground, skylight above the bed to bring in the stars. No televisions anywhere on the property.
The Food
Sierra Mar. Daily changing menu. Wine Spectator Grand Award. The restaurant is the same shape as the coastline, viewed from above.
Muennig designed Sierra Mar so that its footprint from the air mirrors the curve of the Big Sur coast below it. The menu changes daily with what arrives from the kitchen garden and local waters. The wine cellar has held Wine Spectator's Grand Award for years. Complimentary breakfast is included with every stay.
The Food
Sierra Mar. Daily changing menu. Wine Spectator Grand Award. The restaurant is the same shape as the coastline, viewed from above.
Muennig designed Sierra Mar so that its footprint from the air mirrors the curve of the Big Sur coast below it. The menu changes daily with what arrives from the kitchen garden and local waters. The wine cellar has held Wine Spectator's Grand Award for years. Complimentary breakfast is included with every stay.
The Sustainability
Solar powered. No plastic on the property. Built on a working ranch that the Big Sur Land Use Plan protects from any further development.
The Big Sur Land Use Plan — the most restricted land use plan in the United States — means Post Ranch Inn exists within a landscape that cannot be built on further. Solar powers the property. No plastic bottles anywhere. Post Ranch is a founding partner of Regenerative California. The sustainability position is not a programme added to a hotel — it is the reason the hotel was built the way it was.
The Sustainability
Solar powered. No plastic on the property. Built on a working ranch that the Big Sur Land Use Plan protects from any further development.
The Big Sur Land Use Plan — the most restricted land use plan in the United States — means Post Ranch Inn exists within a landscape that cannot be built on further. Solar powers the property. No plastic bottles anywhere. Post Ranch is a founding partner of Regenerative California. The sustainability position is not a programme added to a hotel — it is the reason the hotel was built the way it was.
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