The Outlaw Inn is located in the western portion of the Great Divide Basin in southwestern Wyoming. The motel is situated on the north edge of Rock Springs, Wyoming, at the intersection of Interstate 80 and U.S. Route 191 at 1630 Elk Street. It is located in the northeast quadrant of the intersection on level ground at the west base of an exposed sandstone finger ridge. It is surrounded on all sides by asphalt parking lots. The motel is accessed via a main entrance from the east or north lane of U.S. Route 191 (Elk Street). The property is bordered by a tree row, a wooden fence, and a sandstone outcropping on the east; a Chevron Truck Stop complex on the south, which is partially visually screened by a wooden fence; U.S. Route 191 (Elk Street), a multi-lane paved highway on the west, which has numerous commercial businesses along its west side; and an Exxon Service Station to the north.
The Outlaw Inn was constructed in 1965-66 by business partners Don Anselmi, John Anselmi, Mike Vase and Vernon Delgado. It was strategically located to take advantage of the recently completed Interstate 80 and its intersection with U.S. 191, one of the main vehicular routes to Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks. Interstate 80 and its interchange with U.S 191 was completed in 1963, just two years prior to the construction of the Outlaw Inn. The Outlaw Inn was designed by the prominent Lubbock, Texas, architectural firm of Whitaker and Hall and consists of one hundred guest rooms It boasts Wyoming’s first indoor hotel swimming pool within a covered atrium. It also includes a restaurant and a saloon with a drive-up liquor window. Sixty-seven interior “courtside” rooms are built on two levels, and thirty-three drive-up rooms are located along an outside entry level. The Outlaw Inn has been continuously owned and operated by the Anselmi family since it opened in 1966. Mark and Nancy Anselmi are the current owners and operators. The building represents a meld of the International Modernist Style of architecture and Neo-Expressionism, with its low profile and gently sloping, intersecting shed roofs with extended eaves. The exterior walls are clad with brown manufactured stone veneer (lomastone), allowing the building to blend in with the surrounding sandstone-capped hills and ridges. The interior of the building also features numerous exposed wooden beams throughout the atrium area and the individual rooms.