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.
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