Long-running (15-plus-year) historical ghost tour · Led by author of 'Haunted Nevada City and Grass Valley'
Nevada City was the center of the northern California gold rush. By 1856, when the National Exchange Hotel opened, it was the largest and richest mining town in the state, and its compact downtown — rebuilt in brick after repeated fires — still stands largely intact.
That downtown is the stage for Mark Lyon's Haunted Nevada City walking tour. Lyon, an actor, writer, and storyteller, is the author of the book 'Haunted Nevada City and Grass Valley,' published under his own research into the area's ghost lore. He has offered the Haunted Nevada City and Haunted Grass Valley historical walking tours for more than fifteen years, making this one of the longer-running tour operations in the region.
The tour departs from 210 Broad Street, directly across from the National Hotel, and proceeds up Broad Street with stops keyed to the history of individual buildings — the local color, the people, and the hauntings attached to each. Lyon has described how the stories accumulate from his own audiences: on one walk, two participants reported seeing a ghost at the National Exchange Hotel in the building's former Presidential Suite, a room long rumored among locals for paranormal activity. The Nevada City Chamber of Commerce handles ticketing for the digital audio version of the tour, sold from its office at 132 Main Street, while private guided tours are arranged directly with Lyon. NBC Los Angeles and regional travel outlets have covered the tour and the town's haunted-history programming.
Sources
- https://www.nevadacitychamber.com/haunted-nevada-city-tours/
- https://www.nevadacitychamber.com/haunted-nevada-city-and-grass-valley/
- https://www.nbclosangeles.com/worth-the-trip/discover-the-national-exchange-hotels-haunting-history/2971238/
Apparitions reported by tour participantsBuilding-specific ghost lore along Broad Street
The Haunted Nevada City tour is organized as a guided narrative rather than a single haunting. As Mark Lyon walks Broad Street, he attaches ghost stories to specific gold-rush-era buildings, drawing on the research collected in his book 'Haunted Nevada City and Grass Valley.'
The National Exchange Hotel is one of the recurring stops. Lyon has recounted that during one of his walking tours, two participants told him they had seen a ghost at the hotel in its former Presidential Suite, a room locals have long associated with paranormal activity. That kind of audience-sourced account is part of how the tour's body of stories has grown over its fifteen-plus years.
Because the tour spans many sites, the reported phenomena vary — apparitions, unexplained sounds, and the general sense of presence in old rooms — rather than centering on a single named entity. The stories are presented as local lore tied to documented buildings, and the historical framing of each stop is the throughline of the walk.
