Sanctuary Resort

Sanctuary Resort, a luxurious getaway on Camelback Mountain, has a storied past.

Sanctuary Resort on Camelback Mountain sits beneath The Praying Monk, a rock formation perched upon the proverbial camel’s head. This monk has been in pious meditation since long before humans resided in the Salt River Valley. If this monk, who has witnessed time elapse in Paradise Valley below, could tell you what he has seen, it would be a tale of a desert wilderness that slowly became farmland in the 1880s. The land then suddenly, almost cataclysmically, transformed into a well-developed community spotted with resorts for nature-loving tourists to relax after World War II. Our stone friend would tell you a tale of elite twentieth-century tourism, wherein acquisitive investors created a space marketable to those affluent enough to travel. Sanctuary Resort on Camelback Mountain stands as an example of twentieth-century tourism, as it has reshaped the culture of Paradise Valley as a marketable attraction to the wealthy.

Once a sparsely populated desert community, Paradise Valley began to evolve culturally, economically, and demographically with the rise of tourism. During and after WWII, the Salt River Valley experienced enormous growth in its tourism industry. During the war, the west became home to many war-related industries, and the population exploded as those seeking jobs migrated westward. The population surge caused the spread of modern infrastructure to previously uninhabited lands. This population spread, and the increased expendable income Americans experienced following the war increased leisure travel. By 1949 the state’s tourism industry was a billion-dollar industry.

This enormous growth captured the attention of wealthy celebrity entrepreneurs John Ireland, his wife, Joanne Dru, Sydney Chaplin (Charlie Chaplin’s son), and the world’s first tennis Grand Slam winner, Don Budge. In 1955, these celebrities created the Paradise Valley Racquet Club 1955, the predecessor to Sanctuary on Camelback Mountain. The club was intended for the wealthy, as local inhabitants could not afford a membership. Despite the resort’s status as an elite desert haven of luxurious seclusion, it fell into bankruptcy due to mismanagement. By 1967 the property was described by newspapers at the time as a “rapidly eroding pile of masonry steadily spreading its blight over the most scenic points on the mountain.” That year, an entrepreneur from California named John Gardiner bought the property, intending to pursue the previous owners’ agenda for an elite tennis-themed community.

John Gardiner, a Philadelphia-born WWII veteran, further deviated from the local culture, altering the physical landscape to cater to a wealthy, foreign clientele. Gardiner launched his first tennis resort in 1957 with the opening of the first John Gardiner’s Tennis Ranch in Carmel Valley, California. This resort would become the mold of tennis-themed communities that he would eventually replicate eleven times, spanning eight states. In 1970 he reopened the Paradise Valley Racquet Club as another John Gardiner’s Tennis Ranch. The club was “members only” and closed off to the public in the spirit of exclusivity. The native desert landscape of cacti and sagebrush surrounding the property became manicured grass lawns, fountains, and other vegetation deemed suitable to the intended guests. Gardiner also expanded the property by adding three additional tennis courts to the original five, twelve Quintas, and casita-style condominiums and houses. Lodging would be “rented to club members only [would] not…available to transients, nor [would] use of any other of the properties facilities.” By stripping the grounds of their natural vegetation and constructing spaces available only to the wealthy, Gardiner aided in giving Paradise Valley a new identity—one that attracted national interest while barring entry to locals.

The design of John Gardiner’s Tennis Ranches catered to the top echelons of society, hosting presidents, actors, and athletes and creating a stark divide between guests and local citizens - as most in the community could not hope to afford entry as anything more than wage workers at the resort. Developing many lavish resorts in Paradise Valley raised property costs to compound this divide, pricing local residents out of a relaxing resort stay - and out of the community itself.

In 1996, Gardiner sold the tennis ranch, renamed Gardiner’s Resort on Camelback. The significant renovations that followed transformed the once racquet club and condominium community into the modern resort we see today. The property became known as Sanctuary Resort on Camelback Mountain in 2001. As the Praying Monk looms watchfully over Sanctuary, he continues to see the product of a major shift in the Valley’s identity—from farmland to the luxurious desert getaway. It may hearken to him the dangers of twentieth-century tourism and its divisive nature. While John Gardiner created a legacy for Sanctuary, he also created a resort that was not made with the preservation of the culture of the Salt River Valley in mind.

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