Goldfield Hotel is a Silent Witness to a Community's Rich Past

   The rise and fall of the Goldfield Hotel could be seen as a reflection of the city’s own story. The hotel was built in 1907-08 during the height of the mining town’s boom times and its long, slow demise has paralleled the area’s decline.

   Standing four stories tall, the hotel, which is in the center of the community, was designed by a Reno architect named George Holesworth, a partner in the prestigious firm of Curtis and Holesworth, which had also designed Morrill Hall on the University of Nevada, Reno campus and the Mizpah Hotel in Tonopah.

   Construction of the $250,000 (about $8.7 million in today’s dollars) Neo-Classical-influenced structure took more than a year due to a delay caused by a labor dispute.

   Historian Patty Cafferata, who has written about the hotel, said the first floor was built using granite imported from Rocklin, California and the building incorporated many of the newest amenities, including steam heat and an electric elevator.

   The 150-room hotel’s lobby was paneled in dark mahogany wood and three iron pillars in the room were outfitted with cushy, circular black leather buttoned banquettes. According to Cafferata, it cost more than $40,000 to furnish the hotel.

   From the street level, the brick and stone hotel rose 56 feet in height and was 170-feet long on one side (Columbia Street) and 100 feet in depth along Crook Avenue. Above the first floor, the hotel takes a “U” shape with a central area flanked by two wings.

   The hotel’s original owners were two successful early Goldfield miners, Granville Hayes and M.J. Monette (known collectively as the Hayes-Monette Syndicate) who had struck it rich with their leased Mohawk No. 2 mine. But in 1908, banker George Wingfield, partnered with U.S. Senator George Nixon, formed the Goldfield Consolidated Mine Company, which swept up all the producing mines in the district.

   In addition to owning all of the district’s mines, Wingfield also gained financial control of many other prominent businesses in the region, including the John S. Cook and Company Bank, Tonopah’s Mizpah Hotel, the Tonopah Banking Corporation, and the new Goldfield Hotel.

   The opening of the Goldfield Hotel was a call for celebration. Its “soft” opening on January 15, 1908, included a lavish party for some 650 guests. The official opening in June 1908 included special Pullman train cars that transported visitors from San Francisco.

   In its earliest years, the hotel was apparently profitable. However, as the area’s mines began to fade, so did the appeal of such a grand hotel. By 1911, it was starting to lose money. After 1917, Wingfield began leasing it to others to operate. In 1923, shortly after a fire destroyed nearly all of Goldfield, Wingfield sold it to Elko hotelier Newton Crumley.

   Crumley, who would later own the Commercial Hotel in Elko (with son, Newton Crumley, Jr.) in turn sold it in 1925 to Joseph Basile, Jr., who was the first of a long line of owners who came and went during the next two decades. The last time the hotel actually had paying customers was in September 1945.

   In subsequent years, the hotel has passed through the hands of additional owners, many of whom announced plans to restore it to its original glory—and even started work on it— but none ever completed the monumental job.

   Today, the hotel remains boarded up—a reminder of Goldfield’s better times. In recent years, the old hotel, which is allegedly haunted, has been featured in several ghost hunter-type programs. In 2022, the property was listed for sale at a cool $4.9 million.

   For more information, go to: http://www.goldfieldhistoricalsociety.com/goldfield-hotel/. Patty Cafferata’s book on the hotel is titled, “The Goldfield Hotel, Gem of the Desert” and it can be found in bookstores or online book vendors.

Visiting Goldfield's Unusual International Car Forest of the Last Church

   Perhaps the most unexpected aspect regarding Goldfield’s International Car Forest of the Last Church is that the massive art installation, consisting of some three dozen upturned cars planted in the desert, was created to break a world record.

   The forest was the brainchild of two men, Chad Sorg and Mike Rippie, who, in 2002, decided to “plant” cars on 80-acres of vacant land owned by Rippie that bordered U.S. 95.

   Both Sorg, a Reno artist, and Rippie, a longtime resident of Goldfield, were familiar with famous car-art installations, like the Cadillac Ranch in Amarillo, Texas, which consists of 10 Cadillacs buried nose down in the ground, and Nebraska’s Carhenge, a similar art piece, which has 38 vehicles.

   Rippie wanted to set a new world’s record for most upturned cars used in an artwork (it’s actually listed that way by Guinness Book of World Records) by having even more vehicles and knew he could do it since he owned more than 40 cars, trucks, and buses.

   Between 2002 and 2012, the two used a backhoe and lots of elbow grease to make the art project/attraction/world record site a reality. In some cases, the vehicles were planted nose in the ground while in others, several cars were stacked on top of each other.

   Perhaps most impressively, the two managed to plant several buses, including one that on a hill that rises high over the car-littered landscape.

   The two also hoped that people would come to the site and express themselves artistically by spray painting the cars. The result are some pretty crazy and imaginative designs, such as a Picasso-esque face of a cat painted on the hood of an upright car.

   At the entrance to the forest is a small structure with a large sign identifying the place. Another placard informs visitors they are entering at their own risk and warns to not climb on the vehicles because it isn’t safe.

   Continuing on the dirt road for a short distance, you can drop into a ravine containing the bulk of the vehicles or drive to a rise above the ravine where a bus and several other vehicles are perched.

   Visitors can basically wander around for as long as they want, taking photos and reveling in the place’s weirdness. There is no admission charge although the attraction’s website notes it is a legal non-profit and accepts donations.

   Since the car forest was created, the site has become a popular attraction for travelers on U.S. 95, appearing in features in magazines and newspapers from all over the country.

   According to an article about the car forest that appeared in ROUTE magazine, Rippie and Sorg eventually had a falling out. Rippie continues to live in Goldfield but the site is now owned and overseen by Sharon Artlip, owner of a Goldfield rock shop.

   A nice video of the International Car Forest was produced a couple of years ago by the excellent Wild Nevada television program. Here’s a link to the segment about the car forest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0JcPAUML_E.

   For more information about the International Car Forest of the Last Church, go to:  https://internationalcarforestofthelastchurch.com/ or check out the Travel Nevada information about the site at: https://travelnevada.com/arts-culture/international-car-forest-of-the-last-church/.

Goldfield's History Comes Alive at the Town Cemetery

  The historic Goldfield Cemetery, located just north of the Central Nevada mining community, has some good friends.

  Unlike some old mining town cemeteries that have been ignored or have fallen into disrepair, Goldfield’s graveyard has been well-maintained and protected by residents and supporters over the years. Representatives of the local historical society have even placed small metal plaques on many of the crosses and markers giving short information about the deceased.

  The result is a cemetery that isn’t a mystery, but rather is a place where you can learn about the individuals buried there and, in learning their cause of death, get a glimpse into their lives and the time when they resided in Goldfield.

  The town, which now has a population of about 230 people, was once was the largest city in Nevada with some 20,000 residents. Gold was discovered in the region in 1902 and within a short time a vast boomtown had been constructed around the mines.

  The community experienced its heyday from about 1903 to 1910, after which the mines became less productive. The largest mining company closed its operations in 1919 and four years later a fire caused by an exploding liquor still destroyed much of the town. 

  In its early years, the town’s cemetery was located in the downtown, adjacent to the Las Vegas & Tonopah Railroad Depot. Deciding the location was not the best first impression the city wanted to make for any visitors disembarking from the train, in 1908, all of the bodies were exhumed (about 70 at that time) and relocated to the present site.

  According to local lore, the group that took on the task of moving the dead became known as the “Official Ghouls.”

  While considered one big cemetery, the Goldfield graveyard consists of more than a half-dozen smaller burial grounds that cater to various religious groups and fraternal organizations.

  Thus, there is a general area but also designated places for Catholics, Protestants, Masons, the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, Elks, Knights of Pythias, the Moose Lodge, and even members of the International Workers of the World labor organization. On the southwestern edge is a Potter’s Field.

  If you respectfully stroll through the cemetery you’ll be able to find out about such luminaries as:

  • Count Constantine de Podhorsky, a Polish nobleman turned mine promoter who was shot and killed while eating in a French restaurant on March 21, 1907 by a man who claimed the count had seduced his wife.

  • Thomas and Lucy Heslip, who both died tragically in August 1909. According to records, Lucy Heslip was sitting on her porch with two female friends one evening when a man named Patrick “Pegleg” Casey, who was drunk, came by to attempt to shoot her friend, Mrs. Alice Mann, for rejecting his advances. Casey shot Mann, injuring her, then fatally shot Lucy Helslip. He apparently tried to kill himself but failed. Upon learning his wife had been killed, Thomas Heslip decided he couldn’t live without her and killed himself the following day by ingesting cyanide.

  • The unknown man who died from eating paste. While it seems like a hoax, apparently on July 14, 1908 a man died from eating too much library paste. A doctor concluded that the man was starving and in bad physical condition when he wolfed down an entire jar of paste. The only identifying property on the man was a letter from a man named Ross. He is buried in the Potter’s Field.

  • Perhaps the strangest death—yes, even weirder than dying from eating paste—occurred on March 17, 1918 when local gravedigger and cemetery sexton John F. Meagher died while digging a grave. Meagher encountered a large boulder while digging and decided to load it with blasting powder to break it up. After lighting the fuse, he accidentally fell into the grave he was digging. As he scrambled to get out, the explosion went off and killed him. He was discovered the next day lying in the grave, which, ironically, became his final resting place.

  For more information about Goldfield’s wonderful cemetery, go to: http://www.goldfieldhistoricalsociety.com/goldfield-cemetery-stories/.