Wednesday, December 08, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

JOHN L. SMITH: With ownership dream impossible, book on historic hotel next best thing

I've always wondered what it would be like to own my own hotel.

Not one of those palatial megaresorts on the Strip -- they look too much like work -- but one of a handful of historical palaces from Nevada's frontier past. I've had my eye on three in recent years: The Jackson House in Eureka, the Mizpah in Tonopah and the Goldfield Hotel.

The Jackson House is unquestionably one of Nevada's great historical buildings. It has been remodeled and returned to its original splendor with high ceilings and claw-foot bathtubs.

The Mizpah has struggled along with Tonopah but has managed to be resuscitated every few years as a hotel-casino.

Meanwhile, the Goldfield Hotel has stood winter after winter like a gray stone ghost of prosperity past right along U.S. Highway 95 in the heart of the town located 190 miles north of Las Vegas.

Carson City resident Edgar "Red" Roberts is trying to revive it these days after buying it at auction in August 2003. He paid $360,000 for the hotel and all its rattling ghosts and plumbing. The hotel and its new owner this week attracted the attention of The Wall Street Journal, which published a front-page feature story on the historic hostel.

For me, ownership is pretty much out of the question. The best I'll be able to do is book a room at the hotel about the time Roberts is scheduled to reopen it in August 2005.

Until then, I've found the ideal diversion to tide me over. It's a nifty little history book by Patty Cafferata called "The Goldfield Hotel: Gem of the Desert." Slim enough to fit in a coat pocket at just 40 pages, it covers the life and rough times of the hotel from the completion of its construction in 1908 -- just in time for the mines to dry up and the big spenders to head out of town -- through its various incarnations as a hotel, boarding house, Army barracks, gold mine claim and roadside rest.

If Cafferata's name sounds familiar, it's because the Reno resident is the former state treasurer, former Esmeralda County district attorney and the daughter of former Nevada Congresswoman Barbara Vucanovich.

Cafferata became smitten with the history of the hotel while serving in the Esmeralda district attorney's office, where she no doubt heard some of the intriguing stories that surround the place.

If tall tales were bricks and mortar, the Goldfield Hotel would top the Stratosphere as the highest building in the state.

Depending on your source, the Goldfield Hotel was a resting place for two presidents and provided employment for Jack Dempsey and Wyatt Earp. Dempsey was a bar bouncer there, and Earp was a faro dealer.

None of that is true, of course, but those are modest elongations of the facts compared with the one about how the hotel's ceiling was made of 22-carat gold. And I love the story about the former owner who promised to make the hotel look as it did back in September 1906 when Joe Gans beat Battling Nelson in a famous lightweight prizefight promoted by Tex Rickard. (Remember, the hotel wasn't completed until January 1908.)

The building cost $337,500 to construct from its stone exterior all the way down to its mahogany paneling and $40,000 in furnishings. That's in pre-1910 dollars. Some of those furnishings, by the way, through the years have turned up in houses all over central Nevada.

Technically speaking, Roberts' $360,000 purchase was a steal.

Of course, that's probably what all the hotel's previous owners thought.

At the end of her story, Cafferata seems to wonder whether Roberts, the hotel's latest savior, hasn't picked a job too big for one person.

"Time will tell if he will succeed in reversing the hotel's fortunes by creating a true gem in the desert," she writes, "or will he too find that the Goldfield Hotel is only fool's gold?"

Cafferata's slender work is a delightful read for anyone like me who has dreamed of owning a piece of Nevada's glorious frontier hotel history.

In a state that has neglected and imploded many of its historic buildings, the least we can do is cheer Red Roberts' effort to exorcise the ghosts of the Goldfield Hotel.

John L. Smith's column appears Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. E-mail him at Smith@reviewjournal.com or call 383-0295.