Former United Verde Hospital on Cleopatra Hill
200 Hill Street, Jerome, AZ 86331
Age
All Ages
Cost
$$$
Room rates typically $200-$400 per night depending on season and room type
Access
Wheelchair OK
Historic hotel with operating Otis elevator from 1927; Jerome itself is built on a steep mountainside
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1927 · Mining History · Arizona Healthcare History
The United Verde Hospital opened in 1927 to replace a smaller facility damaged in a 1917 blasting incident that hit a fault line beneath Jerome. Constructed for the United Verde Copper Company to serve miners and their families, the hospital was equipped with patient call lights, an ice-making room, an Otis self-service elevator, laboratories, X-ray machines, and surgical facilities. By 1930 it was rated among the most modern hospitals in Arizona and the broader West.
Jerome's copper boom slowed after World War II, and the United Verde Hospital closed in 1950 along with much of the mine. The building sat largely empty for more than four decades as Jerome shrank from a population of fifteen thousand to fewer than a hundred residents before its slow revival as an arts town in the 1960s and 1970s. The Altherr family purchased the hospital building in 1994 and adapted it as the Jerome Grand Hotel, opening in 1996. The original 1927 Otis elevator remains in operation.
The hotel's marketing leans into its hospital history. The Asylum Restaurant on the upper floor takes its name from the building's earlier use. Room layouts and hallway configurations preserve much of the hospital's original plan, which is unusual among adaptive-reuse hospital conversions.
Sources
The hotel's most-cited ghost story belongs to Claude Harvey, a hospital maintenance worker whose body was found pinned under the Otis self-service elevator in 1935. The circumstances of his death have never been clearly explained in public records. Guests have reported the sound of the elevator operating without occupants, particularly on the lower floors.
Guest accounts collected by the hotel and by paranormal investigation groups describe labored breathing and wheezing in empty rooms, the sound of a hospital gurney moving through corridors after hours, and figures observed in white gowns and nurse's uniforms on the patient floors. A figure in a long lab coat has been reported on the third floor.
Room 32 has the most consistent activity reports in the hotel's published records. Two patient deaths during the hospital era have been associated with the room in hotel materials, though specific names and dates have not been published. Guests in Room 32 have reported lights cycling, the bed shaking, and the sensation of being watched.
The hotel has hosted episodes of multiple paranormal television series, including Ghost Adventures. The Asylum Restaurant on the upper floor occasionally features paranormal-themed programming during Halloween season. As with most hotel-based paranormal coverage, the published accounts blend guest testimony, staff anecdote, and investigation findings; the Altherr family operation is unusual in maintaining a public log of guest reports.
Notable Entities
Media Appearances
Spend a night in the 1927 hospital building that served Jerome's copper miners until 1950. The hotel preserves the original Otis self-service elevator. Room 32, where two guest deaths reportedly occurred during the hospital era, is a frequently requested room for paranormal-interested visitors.
The hotel offers self-guided and guided evening investigations of the building's former patient floors and the elevator shaft where maintenance worker Claude Harvey died in 1935. Activity is most often reported on the third and fourth floors.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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