Goldfield Hotel

Goldfield, Nevada, sits at roughly fifty-seven hundred feet above sea level in the high desert south of Tonopah, on a stretch of US Highway 95 that passes more abandoned mining towns than living ones. At the height of the Nevada gold rush in the first decade of the twentieth century, Goldfield was the largest city in Nevada with more than twenty thousand residents and the headquarters of the Goldfield Consolidated Mines Company, which produced the largest single year of gold output in Nevada history. The four-story brick hotel that opened on Crook Avenue in 1908 was the symbol of that prosperity, and its long decline since has produced one of the most persistently reported haunted sites in the American West.

A Hotel Built for a Boom

The Goldfield Hotel was constructed in 1907 and 1908 at a reported cost of nearly five hundred thousand dollars, an enormous sum at the time. It featured one hundred and fifty four rooms, mahogany paneling, gold leaf ceilings, an Otis elevator that was the first west of the Mississippi, and a lobby that contemporary press described as the equal of any in San Francisco. Mining magnates, politicians, and traveling celebrities passed through. The hotel’s bar, the Capeharts Cafe, was famous regionally. By 1918, however, the Goldfield mines were already in steep decline. A 1923 fire destroyed much of the surrounding town, and by the 1930s the hotel was operating at reduced capacity. It closed in 1945 and has stood empty, with brief and partial exceptions, ever since.

The Persistent Stories

Goldfield’s small surviving population, fewer than three hundred residents in recent census counts, has kept the hotel’s paranormal reputation alive across generations. The most persistent legend concerns a young woman, often called Elizabeth, said to have been the lover of George Wingfield, the Nevada banker and mining magnate who controlled the hotel and much of the state’s politics in the early twentieth century. According to the local tradition, Elizabeth became pregnant by Wingfield, was confined to a room on the second or third floor of the hotel, and either died in childbirth or was murdered. Her room is variously identified as 109 or 309 depending on the source. The story has no verifiable historical basis. No woman matching the description appears in available Goldfield records, and Wingfield’s documented life and movements do not align with the legend’s specifics. Yet the story has shaped reports from the building for nearly a century, and witnesses repeatedly describe a female apparition, the sound of a baby crying, and an oppressive atmosphere in the rooms identified with the legend.

The Other Reports

Beyond the Elizabeth story, the hotel has produced a wide range of reports. Witnesses describe disembodied footsteps, doors that open and close on their own, cold spots in specific locations, and apparitions including a child sometimes seen on the staircase and a male figure variously described in formal dress. The lobby has been the site of multiple recorded incidents, including a famous 2001 episode involving a paranormal investigation team during which a cinderblock was reportedly thrown across a room with no visible source. That incident was filmed for a televised paranormal program and remains debated, with skeptics noting the production circumstances and defenders pointing to the multiple witnesses present.

Investigators Through the Decades

The hotel has been investigated more or less continuously since the 1970s. Researchers including the American Ghost Society, regional groups based in Las Vegas and Reno, and a long succession of television production teams have visited the property. Among the most cited investigators is Robert Bess, who spent extended periods at the hotel in the 1980s and 1990s and produced extensive notes on what he considered repeatable phenomena, including specific cold spots, recurring auditory events on the second floor, and several photographs he believed showed anomalous figures. As with most such collections of evidence, none of it rises to the level of conclusive proof, but the volume and consistency of the accounts is notable.

Repeated Failed Restorations

The hotel has been the subject of multiple proposed restorations over the past several decades. None has succeeded in fully reopening the building. Owners have cited financing difficulties, structural challenges, and the small market for a luxury hotel in a town with limited tourist infrastructure. Several restoration attempts have included reports from workers of strange occurrences during their time on the property, including tools moved between locations, voices heard in empty rooms, and at least one incident in which a worker reportedly refused to continue after an experience he declined to describe in detail. Whether such reports reflect genuine phenomena or the influence of the hotel’s reputation on workers already familiar with its stories is impossible to determine.

A Small Town That Knows Its Hotel

Goldfield itself, with its hot summer winds, its high desert silence, and its weathered Western buildings, lends the hotel an atmosphere that few urban haunted sites can match. The town’s residents have long since stopped pretending the building is ordinary. Local businesses sell ghost-themed merchandise, and the annual Goldfield Days festival in August often includes paranormal events. The hotel itself is privately owned and access is generally restricted, though periodic tours and investigations have been arranged. Like the Stanley Hotel in Colorado, the Crescent Hotel in Arkansas, or the Hot Lake Hotel in Oregon, the Goldfield Hotel sits at the intersection of historical grandeur, economic decline, and accumulated ghost stories. What separates it from those sites is its continued unrestored state. The hotel today is much closer to what it was in 1945 than to what it was in 1910, and that preservation by neglect has kept its shadows largely intact.

A Building Waiting for Something

Whatever the Goldfield Hotel actually contains, it is unusual in the deliberateness with which it has been left alone. Most haunted hotels of comparable historical importance have been restored, demolished, or repurposed. Goldfield endures because Goldfield itself has not quite ended, and because successive owners have not quite found a way forward. The hotel waits. The desert silence around it grows heavier as the town empties. And the stories, whatever their factual basis, continue to find new witnesses willing to spend a night there and see what happens.

Sources

• Esmeralda County Historical Society
• Nevada Historical Society, Goldfield records
• George Wingfield Papers, University of Nevada
• Robert Bess investigation notes, 1980s-1990s