The ghost from a golden past reappears

Friday, May 18, 2001 | 4:16 a.m.

The Goldfield Hotel

Located 180 miles northwest of Las Vegas on U.S. 95, will open for tours noon-5 p.m. on May 26, 27 and 28.

Tickets

Available for purchase by sending a check for $15 apiece to Esmeralda County, P.O. Box 339, Goldfield, NV 89013, or by phone via credit card at (775) 485-6352.

Visitors to historic Goldfield during the Memorial Day weekend will get a chance to touch a piece of history -- and maybe even see a famous ghost of the Old West -- during a tour of the Goldfield Hotel.

The long-closed resort, which just after the turn of the 20th century was alive with music and guests in black tie and tails and ball gowns, will have its silent halls trod by curious folks in shorts and sandals during a limited reopening.

"At one time it was the finest hotel between Denver and San Francisco," said Linda Toner, an Esmeralda County official who serves as a historian for the nearly 100-year-old property.

"The ceiling was plated in gold, and it was one of the first hotels in the West to have electric elevators. It was built at a cost of $500,000 -- and that was a lot of money to build a hotel in 1908."

Esmeralda County District Attorney Patty Cafferata, whose office oversees the property, said "the guided tour of the interior of the hotel (is) an opportunity to learn about some of the famous ghosts in residence."

One of the haunting spirits is that of a prostitute who died while she was kept chained in one of the rooms, allegedly by a Goldfield city leader of the early 20th century.

Located 180 miles northwest of Las Vegas on U.S. 95, the hotel, which in the 1940s housed soldiers stationed at the Tonopah Air Field, will open for tours noon-5 p.m. on May 26, 27 and 28.

Each tour will be limited to 30 people, and up to 150 people will tour the site in an afternoon, Cafferata said, noting that proceeds from the ticket sales will go to the Esmeralda County Historic Preservation Fund.

The hotel, sold and resold many times between the 1940s and '90s, rarely has been open to the public in the last 20 years, Cafferata said.

Goldfield once was a mining boomtown, where gold was discovered in 1902. The hotel's grand opening in June 1908 was a gala affair, featuring a gourmet menu in its restaurant that included oysters, lobster, quail, squid and Roquefort cheese, Cafferata said.

Goldfield's population quickly grew to 20,000, and the town at that time had scores of saloons, five banks, four schools, three railroads and two daily newspapers.

But controversy and disasters went hand-in-hand with prosperity. Federal troops were called in to prevent violence during the 1907 miner labor strike; there was extensive flooding in 1913; and in 1923 a fire sparked by the explosion of a still destroyed 53 square blocks, but spared the hotel when winds shifted.

The Goldfield Hotel closed in the 1920s and was not reopened until 1942. A year later, the Army took over, adding a bar, grill, lobby and barber shop and renovating fourth-floor hotel rooms, Cafferata said. Additional structural improvements and renovations were made in the 1990s.

In June 2000 the county tried to sell the Goldfield Hotel along with 139 other parcels. While 127 parcels were sold, raising $250,000, the hotel failed to get an acceptable bid.

In August another attempt will be made to sell the hotel, Toner said.