HauntBound archive · catalog record
Reported phenomena, as catalogued
Gold Country B&B with the Senator's Quiet Footsteps
75 Main Street, Sutter Creek, CA 95685
Research updated May 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
$$$
B&B nightly rates typical of Gold Country boutique inns. Seventeen rooms and cottages; rates vary by room and season.
Access
Limited Access
Multi-building inn with stairs; main house is two-story
Equipment
Photos OK
First Bed-and-Breakfast in the Western United States · California Gold Country Historic District · Voorheis Family Residence
The main house of the Sutter Creek Inn was originally the residence of Edward Voorheis, a California state senator whose mining interests had drawn him to Amador County during the late nineteenth century. Voorheis married Clara McIntire, the widow of an earlier owner, and the family occupied the house through the early twentieth century. Voorheis served in the California State Senate during the period when Amador County's hardrock gold mines were among the most productive in the state.
In 1966, Jane Way, a Burlingame mother of five, purchased the property and over a period of months converted five bedrooms and two bathrooms into a bed-and-breakfast. The inn is consistently identified in California-tourism literature as the first B&B in the western United States.
The property has since expanded to twelve rooms across the original main house and adjacent buildings on Main Street, between Yosemite National Park and Lake Tahoe in the heart of California's Gold Country. The Way family has continued to operate the inn across more than five decades; Jane Way died in 2011, and the inn remains family-run.
Sutter Creek itself is a designated California Historical Landmark district. The inn anchors the central block of Main Street, which retains its 1850s commercial buildings and Gold Rush-era streetscape.
Sources
Accounts collected by Legends of America, FrightFind, and the Napa Valley Register describe two long-standing residents of the inn: Senator Edward Voorheis and his wife. Witnesses, including hosts and guests, have reported the senator pacing on the upper floor of the main house and have described his wife as a figure occasionally seen in a hallway.
Founder Jane Way recorded an early encounter shortly after she opened the inn in 1966. According to family interviews and regional paranormal coverage, she saw a male figure she took to be the original owner, who told her that he would protect the inn. Way's husband Gordon, an engineer, separately described awakening to see a man and woman standing at the foot of his bed; the figures vanished as he sat up.
The family's accounts include an incident on the day Jane Way died in 2011, when staff reported a wine glass leaving a dish rack and shattering across the kitchen.
Current owner Lindsay Way has described the resident presences as benevolent in interviews with regional press. The inn does not market itself as a haunted hotel and does not run paranormal-investigation programming; the reports surface in guest correspondence and occasional travel features rather than as a tour product.
Notable Entities
Stay in one of twelve rooms at California's first bed-and-breakfast, opened in 1966 by Jane Way in the home of Senator Edward Voorheis. The original main house is the focus of the Voorheis-family lore, and rates include a full breakfast.
See current room rates and availability at Sutter Creek Inn.
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