Oprah Winfrey Once had a Really Bad Time in a Small Colorado Town

Back in the mid-2000s, Oprah Winfrey and Gayle King took a trip across the country for her television show and made several stops in Colorado. The pair, along with the camera crew, Oprah's trainer, and makeup artist, had a great time in Durango, Pagosa Springs, South Fork, Monte Vista, and Trinidad, but one small Colorado town really rubbed everyone involved the wrong way.

Oprah Winfrey Had a Terrible Time in Lamar Colorado

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When the segment aired on Oprah's television show, the host refused to name which town the bad experience stemmed from but it was eventually discovered to be Lamar, Colorado.

The travelers stayed at what was then the Cow Palace, a motel that, at the time, was described by Winfrey as being "grungy, moldy, [and] stinky."

However, what was revealed by a couple of crew members the following morning would prove to be much worse than a dirty motel room.

Oprah Winfrey's Crew Have a Worse Time in Lamar Colorado

The night that Oprah had a bad motel experience, her makeup artist Roosevelt, an African-American man, decided to take a load off at a local bar. However, the other patrons of the bar questioned him about Winfrey being in town and after using racist and sexist slurs to describe her, asked if he was with her to which he replied that he wasn't.

After hearing this story, Winfrey talked to her trainer Chris Robinson, also African-American, about the dirty motel. However, Robinson would then pull out two .22 caliber shell casings he found outside of his room, prompting everyone on the crew to leave Lamar and head to Kansas.

It should be noted that today, The Historic Cow Palace Inn looks amazing and has a Google rating of 4.4 out of 5 stars. In addition, some Lamar residents have commented on the above video that there was a shooting range next to the motel at the time, which might explain why Robinson found shell casings outside of his room.

In any case, based on the footage, it's probably unlikely that you'll see Oprah Winfrey in Lamar any time soon.