Don Henley wrote the lyrics about how people from the Eastern United States ruined the West early on. They killed the Native Americans, and the more West America goes, the more commercial it gets. (thanks, Bill - Johnstown, PA)
In a 1987 interview with Rolling Stone, Henley said: "The Last Resort, on Hotel California, is still one of my favorite songs... That's because I care more about the environment than about writing songs about drugs or love affairs or excesses of any kind. The gist of the song was that when we find something good, we destroy it by our presence - by the very fact that man is the only animal on earth that is capable of destroying his environment. The environment is the reason I got into politics: to try to do something about what I saw as the complete destruction of most of the resources that we have left. We have mortgaged our future for gain and greed."
