1886 Silver-Boom Hotel in the San Juan Mountains
505 Main Street, Ouray, CO 81427
Age
All Ages
Cost
$$$
Boutique hotel rates vary seasonally; check website for current room and suite pricing.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Paved sidewalks; historic building with stairs to upper floors
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1886 · National Register of Historic Places · San Juan Silver-Boom Architecture · Hosted U.S. Presidents Roosevelt and Hoover
Construction of the Beaumont Hotel began on July 5, 1886, on Main Street in Ouray, Colorado, a town then at the center of the San Juan Mountains silver-mining boom. The structure was completed at a reported cost of $75,000 and held its grand opening on July 25, 1887. Designed in the Victorian style typical of late-nineteenth-century mountain resort hotels, the four-story building rose above a downtown of brick storefronts servicing miners, freight teamsters, and rail traffic.
During its first decades, the Beaumont developed a reputation as the most prominent hotel between Denver and the West Coast on the southern Colorado route. Theodore Roosevelt and Herbert Hoover both stayed at the property, alongside mining executives and traveling performers booked into the adjacent Wright Opera House. The hotel's dining room and ground-floor lounge anchored the social calendar of Ouray's Gilded Age.
The collapse of silver prices in the 1890s and the long decline of mining in the San Juans reduced the Beaumont's traffic. The hotel was closed in 1964 and entered nearly four decades of dormancy. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places, but the upper floors remained sealed and unrestored.
A private restoration begun in the late 1990s returned the Beaumont to operation in 2003, and subsequent ownership transitions have continued period-appropriate renovations. The hotel today operates as a small luxury property, with restored guest rooms, the Luella Lounge in the original ground-floor parlor, and a spa.
Sources
The Beaumont's documented historical violence dates to 1887, the year the hotel opened. According to local accounts, a waitress named Luella Day, called Eller, was shot four times in the hotel's parlor lounge by a jealous pastry chef who worked at the property. The chef was held in the town jail to await trial; that night a vigilante crowd is reported to have set the jail on fire while the chef remained inside. The lounge in which Luella was killed has since been renamed the Luella Lounge in her memory, and the story is recounted in regional travel writing and the Colorado Encyclopedia.
Guests and staff have reported a range of phenomena attributed to Luella's residual presence. The most repeated accounts describe a woman's laughter heard in upper-floor rooms, footsteps in vacant hallways, and unexplained movement of small objects in the Luella Lounge. A guest review on Tripadvisor describes a woman's laugh that 'seemed to be coming from the wall at the foot of our bed,' a detail repeated in subsequent travel coverage.
A secondary, looser thread of regional folklore — appearing on aggregator sites such as cohauntedhouses.com and in older ghost compendiums — describes a woman walking the halls at 2:15 a.m. on quarter-moon nights, framed in some versions as a bride murdered by her husband, in others as a maid killed by a jealous ex-lover. These versions contradict one another and are not corroborated by Ouray County historical records or the Beaumont's own materials. Treat them as unverified oral tradition; the Luella Day account is the documented one.
The Beaumont does not market itself primarily as a haunted attraction. The Luella story is woven into the hotel's restoration narrative and is presented as period history alongside the building's architectural and political provenance.
Notable Entities
Book a room in the restored 1886 hotel that hosted Theodore Roosevelt and Herbert Hoover. The Luella Lounge, named for the waitress shot there in 1887, anchors the lobby; guests have reported a woman's laughter and footsteps along the upper-floor corridors.
The hotel's lobby lounge is named for Luella 'Eller' Day, the waitress shot in this room in 1887 by a jealous pastry chef. Drinks and small plates are served in the restored Victorian space.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
Denver, CO
The Lumber Baron Inn is a Scottish immigrant-built 1890 Victorian mansion in Denver's Potter-Highlands neighborhood. Originally home to John Mouat, a lumber mill owner, the property later fell to disrepair and was divided into apartments. On October 13, 1970, two young women — Cara Lee Knoche, 17, and Marianne Weaver, 18 — were found murdered in what is now the Valentine Suite. Both cases remain open cold cases.
Denver, CO
The Brown Palace Hotel opened in 1892, built by Denver real estate developer Henry Cordes Brown on a triangular plot at 17th and Broadway. Constructed of Colorado red granite and Arizona sandstone with a distinctive eight-story atrium topped by stained glass skylights, it has operated continuously for over 130 years. Every U.S. president since Theodore Roosevelt — except one — has stayed at the hotel.
Greeley, CO
The Clarion Hotel and Conference Center, formerly known as the Ramkota Hotel, occupies the downtown Greeley site of the old Chief Theatre. The 146-room property at 701 8th Street has changed brands across decades but retains the address and building footprint that anchor its long-running ghost tradition.