Idaho Hotel, Silver City

The Idaho Hotel began life in 1863 in Ruby City, a gold-and-silver camp in the Owyhee Mountains of south-western Idaho. In 1866 the county seat moved to the booming mining town of Silver City, a few miles up the canyon, and the hotel went with it: according to the hotel’s own history, the building was taken apart, hauled across by ox team and put back together with a new three-storey addition, in time to host a Christmas Eve ball that same year. The Idaho Architecture Project credits J. K. Eastman with the 1866 building, and later owners added water pipes, a bar room, a piazza, a billiards and gambling room, a cellar, and in 1898 a large dining wing.

Silver City at its height held about 2,500 people and some 75 businesses, and the hotel was the hub: stagecoach and telegraph offices, doctors, lawyers and travelling salesmen all shared the building, and it served for balls, weddings, funerals and banquets. It was not always peaceful. The hotel’s history records the 1868 fatal shooting of J. Marion Moore by Samuel Lockhart in front of the building, and a century and a half later local writers still note the fistfights and gunplay of the camp years. When the mines wound down, the hotel closed around 1942 and slid into disrepair.

Edward Jagels bought and reopened the building in the early 1970s (the hotel gives 1972; one regional history says 1970) and spent nearly three decades restoring it. The present owners took over in 2001, and the town was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972. The town runs largely on solar power, a few private owners live there, and an open-house weekend each September lets visitors into old buildings.

The ghost stories come mostly from the owners. In a televised Halloween report, co-owner Jerri Nelson described walking through unexplained cold spots in the hallways, little iridescent orbs drifting down a corridor, and a large gentleman in tuxedo and tails, children, and a woman in a white gown nicknamed “Screaming Alice.” According to the local account, Alice fell down the third-floor stairs decades ago, though no record naming her has been published. Nelson said the apparitions glide rather than make noise. A guest couple reported someone sitting at the foot of the bed; the owner pointed out that the man had left a duffel bag there.

Cold spots in the upstairs halls; small glowing orbs moving along a corridor; apparitions of a man in formal wear, children and a woman in white; a presence felt at the foot of a bed. The accounts come chiefly from the owner and have not been independently investigated.

The upstairs hallways and the third-floor staircase, according to the owners; many sections of the old hotel remain closed to the public.

Silver City is billed as Idaho’s premier ghost town and draws photographers, history buffs and ghost fans to the Owyhee backcountry; the hotel appears in regional round-ups of Idaho’s most haunted places.