Two historic hotels of Southern Colorado
by Anna Herman
Sleeping With Spooks
After riding the rough trail, you need a nice bed and a soft pillow to you’re your head. However, instead of making reservations at the local Holiday Inn, where all the rooms look and smell the same, take a step backwards in time and waltz through the grand entry way of two of southern Colorado’s still-standing historic hotels.
If you visit southern
Colorado to walk the wooden planks of the Royal Gorge Bridge or ride the scenic
Royal Gorge Route Train, the St. Cloud Hotel is the recommended hotel for
you.
Located in Cañon City, the St. Cloud Hotel served as theheadquarters for several moviemakers during the 1940ís and 1950ís. Scott Brady, the star of the film Cañon City, lived at the hotel while filming the movie about the prison break of 1947. The hotel has also hosted other famous guests including Burt Lancaster, Slim Pickins, and Charles Bronson.
The St. Cloud Hotel has experienced a complicated past. The hotel was originally built in Silver Cliff in Custer County and later moved brick by brick to its present location. In the 1930s the hotel housed The Rambler Print Shop, which printed a small Ku Klux Klan newspaper.
Employees and guests will tell you that some of the rooms are haunted. The television in room 209 has a reputation of turning itself on and off, and the spirit of a little girl is believed to wander the halls of the hotel in search of her mother, who stayed there after the little girl’s death. Other strange phenomena have occurred at the hotel, such as when the former owners were renovating and painters found a large bubble filled with water connected on the wall between two rooms.
The first thing front desk clerk Lawrence Blesi noticed when he began working at the hotel was the face of a young boy painted on the wall outside the entry way to the St. Cloud Bar. "I was sitting at my desk my first night here, and I glanced over and saw him staring back at me. I don’t know if the lady who painted the hallway intentionally blended him in with her work, but he is definitely there."
The lobby to the St. Cloud is a cozy gathering place for guests. A fireplace keeps guests sitting on the antique chairs and couches warm in the chilly winter months. There is also a grand piano situated in the lobby for guests to play and enjoy.
The hotel serves as a combination hotel and apartment house. The rooms on the fourth floor have been converted into apartments, while the bottom three floors remain hotel rooms. There are 35 units, which provide a variety of single room and suite accommodations. Individual and unique artwork decorates the hotel room walls. Each room comes with a private bath and wooden vanity. The honeymoon suite is connected to the hotel’s veranda, which overlooks Cañon City’s main street. The oldest operating elevator in Colorado takes guests from floor to floor.
The hotel features a dining room, coffee house, and lounge all available for guests to use. The dining room can be transformed into a banquet hall for weddings and community gatherings. The owners plan to re-open The St. Cloud Bar and Grill in the summer of 2003. The St. Cloud also welcomes guests traveling with pets.
The Crown Jewel of Leadville
After a day on the slopes there is no better way to relax than at the ”crown jewel” of Leadville, the Delaware Hotel. The Delaware is minutes away from Leadville’s affordable Ski Cooper and a short drive to Copper Mountain, Keystone, and Loveland ski resorts. Leadville is also a hot spot for mining buffs and outdoor enthusiasts. The hotel offers affordable ski packages to Ski Cooper and Copper Mountain ski resorts. The hotel also provides packages for cross country skiers and snowmobilers.
Back in the silver boom days of Leadville famous historic figures like the “Unsinkable” Molly Brown and Harry Houdini are known to have visited the hotel. The infamous Baby Doe Tabor, wife of Silver King Horace Tabor, is said to have dropped by the hotel often to warm her hands and feet and write letters by the fire. Baby Doe went from rags to riches after her husband’s death and the drastic decline in the price of silver.
It is believed that the hotel is still visited by guests from the past. Many staff members and guests claim to have had ghostly experiences at the hotel. Employee Denise Bennett has seen only one spirit at the hotel. Last spring while the hotel was empty she was giving a tour to a bride to be and her mother when they noticed a man at the top of the stairs.
“Our floors creak, no matter who is walking on them. He didn’t make a noise,” said Denise of the man at the top of the stairs wearing a dark suit and boots, “that is how I knew.”
Rest assured the spirits that reside at the Delaware Hotel are not malevolent. At times they are even helpful, such as the case with one of the hotel’s desks clerks, Linda. Late one night a guest arrived and declined assistance with his luggage to his room. Linda proceeded to go back to her duties when the man called thanking Linda for sending such a nice lady to help him with his bags. The man said the woman helped him up the stairs to his room and simply smiled when he thanked her. The strange thing about it was that Linda and the gentlemen guest were the only two people in the hotel that night.
As soon as you walk into the hotel, you enter a lobby adorned with antiques. Chairs, couches, statues, tables and oil lamps (all complete with price tags) decorate the Victorian lobby. An old-fashioned bar that warms up guests with apple cider and coffee consumes one whole wall in the lobby area. The bar also provides adult guests with beer and wine.
Inside the rooms there is plenty of space to relax. Rooms vary from singles to suites to family rooms. Huge windows draped with lace flood the room with sunlight and charm. King, queen, or canopy beds and wooden vanities reside in every room. The hotel has limited storage for guests’ skis and snowboards. The Delaware hotel has a restaurant that is open for breakfast and a friendly staff member will happily recommend dining places in the area for lunch and dinner. The hotel also has a gift shop called the Delaware Mercantile located on the first floor of the building. The shop has a wide array of gifts including t-shirts and fine jewelry.
Visiting these historic 1800s hotels not only allows for a comfortable stay, it lets you really experience the history of the area. You may even feel like you are getting movie star treatment at the St. Cloud or hear bumps in the night at the Delaware. All in all your stay at one of these historic hotels guarantees that it will far surpass any stay at the nearest Comfort Inn.
Anna Biography:
Anna Herman is currently a senior at the University of Southern Colorado. She will be graduating in May 2003 with a degree in Mass Communications and minor in English. With her degree she plans on entering into the wonderful world of broadcast television working as part of the studio crew and moving her way up to become a producer/director for television programming.