Boulder Dam Hotel gets second chance

Jeffrey Libby

Wednesday, June 6, 2001 | 8:25 a.m.

On a weekday morning in the mid-1930s, Ann Pittman, a waitress at the Boulder Dam Hotel, began to circulate a rumor.

While she was serving the well-to-do guests in the shade of the hotel's front patio, a government bus pulled up across the street. A crowd of men filed in the hotel.

One of the guests asked if the men worked at the dam.

Pointing, Pittman said, "Yes, and that man drills for diamonds."

"By the end of that day, everyone wanted to go down to the dam and look for diamonds," Pittman said, laughing at the memory during a telephone interview Monday.

Open for business since 1931 and completed in 1933, the Boulder Dam Hotel quickly became a regular stopping place for the jet set.

Some were curious to see the engineering marvel being built nine miles to the east -- then known as Boulder Dam. Other guests of the 83-room hotel stayed, too, to wait out the relatively short six-week waiting period required for a divorce in Nevada.

Many came by chauffeured car from other big-name luxury hotels, such as the Biltmore Hotel in Beverly Hills, the Adams Hotel in Phoenix and the Furnace Creek Inn in Death Valley, Calif. Others arrived by plane at the Boulder City airport, the only such facility in Southern Nevada at that time.

On Tuesday many of the guests had to drive only a few blocks to stroll up the front walk overlooking Arizona Street. They arrived for the official reopening of 22 rooms at the hotel after an eight-year restoration effort led by several community groups.

Pittman and her husband, Joe, who worked at the hotel as a bellboy, were two of several guests at the function.

Bill Ferrence, manager of the Boulder Credit Union and president of the association that organized the restoration, explained the long, mostly volunteer effort by saying, "The hotel was out of place in the Southwest. But in Boulder City it fits because Boulder City is out of place in Southern Nevada. We have a no-growth ordinance. There's no gambling. We vote. We're proud of our history and we're trying to maintain it, not implode it."

The hotel was out of place from the beginning, from its Dutch Colonial architecture to the easy lifestyle of its clientele. While as many as 4,000 men lived in tents on the far side of the gates at Railroad Pass waiting for work, the guests of the Boulder Dam Hotel enjoyed an air-conditioned front lobby, 14-foot ceilings, private bathrooms and special quarters for their dogs.

But despite the vast economic disparities between the hotel guests, who could afford the $5 nightly charge, and the locals struggling to get by in the midst of the Depression, Pittman says people still "mixed" at the hotel restaurant. The local bridge group met each week in the front lobby, paneled in pale peach-tone Southern gumwood. Guests played a nearby piano.

"It wasn't too expensive, and we were glad to have the local trade as well," Ann Pittman said.

But the buzz created by the presence of celebrities such as Bette Davis, Shirley Temple and Will Rogers was quieted with the gasoline shortages of World War II.

The hotel continued on, but business slacked off through the 1950s and 1960s. In the 1980s, former Sen. Cliff McCorkle managed to restore a handful of rooms and reopen the restaurant, but operating costs -- about $40,000 a month -- forced him to declare bankruptcy.

A quick succession of other hopefuls came and went. By the 1990s the hotel had fallen almost to flophouse status. The Boulder City Fire Department closed the building at least twice in the 1990s due to building code violations and fire hazards. The hotel had become less a stop for tourists than a place in which people eked out a home life with week-to-week payments.

"The curtains were old, the carpet was torn, there were beer bottles in the lobby," Linda Faiss, vice-president of a Las Vegas public relations and lobbying firm, said. "But the picture of Marilyn Monroe over the fireplace was what spurred me into action."

In May 1993, Ferrence and some friends talked informally about addressing the the hotel's state of disrepair. Seven months later they formed the Boulder Dam Hotel Association, a group that includes representatives from the local art guild, chamber of commerce, museum and city government. They were determined to restore the hotel, despite outstanding debts of $565,000, a leaky roof and other needed repairs.

The association raised more than $1.1 million through city, state and federal grants, birdhouse auctions, cruises and other private fund-raisers and donations.

Guests today will pay about $109 a night for a small room, many of which are furnished with furniture donated by Las Vegas casinos. They will receive a gift basket of a fresh-baked cookie, some chocolate, passes to the city museum and a free breakfast. They'll also be able to dine at six or seven restaurants, shop at several stores, go to parks, see a play in the nearby historic theater, go mountain biking or even visit Las Vegas if they so choose, Faiss said.

Some probably will, just as they did back in the 1930s. Joe Pittman, who worked as a bellboy, often drove groups to Las Vegas in the evenings to see Block 16, where prostitutes worked both sides of the streets, and ranchers and miners gambled in the casinos.

Many stopped for a drink at the Green Shack restaurant, where they marveled at the prostitutes, pimps, dignitaries and families, all of whom were eating and dancing in the same room.

"For the day, you couldn't believe it," Pittman said.

But for most, an hour in Las Vegas was enough, he said. "I'd bring them to see the sights, but they didn't want to stay. The main thing was to see that they were comfortable."

That meant driving back along Boulder Highway, the heat in the four-door Chevrolet softened by a swamp cooler hung from the passenger-side window, to the Boulder Dam Hotel.