Jerome Wheeler's 1889 Aspen landmark—electric lights, a Victorian pool ghost, and Hunter S. Thompson's preferred bar stool
330 E Main St, Aspen, CO 81611
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
$$$$
Luxury hotel; room rates typically $500+ per night. J-Bar open to the public.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Historic building with elevator access; modern renovations have improved accessibility
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1889 · NRHP Listed · Jerome B. Wheeler construction · First electric lighting west of Mississippi · Hunter S. Thompson connection
Jerome B. Wheeler completed his namesake hotel in 1889, the same year he opened the Wheeler Opera House across town. The construction cost reached approximately $150,000—an extraordinary sum for a mountain mining town—and the result was a building designed to match European standards of luxury. Electric lighting, running water, indoor plumbing, steam heat, and an elevator distinguished it from anything else in the Rockies at the time.
The hotel served as Aspen's social center through the silver boom years. When the Sherman Silver Purchase Act was repealed in 1893, Aspen's population collapsed almost overnight. The Jerome became the town's only functioning hotel, preserved largely through the efforts of Mansor Elisha, a former bartender who kept it operating as a community gathering space through the lean decades.
Aspen's second life as a ski resort, launched by Walter Paepcke's postwar investment, revived the Jerome. The pool was added during Herbert Bayer's 1947 renovation and became, as Wikipedia notes, 'the first place in Aspen where celebrities could be seen.' Gary Cooper and John Wayne were regulars in the postwar years. Hunter S. Thompson used the J-Bar as his headquarters during his 1970 campaign for Pitkin County Sheriff.
The building received a $24 million restoration in the mid-1980s that removed Bauhaus-era paint to expose original brick and restore Victorian interiors. Auberge Resorts now operates the property. The hotel is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Sources
The Hotel Jerome's paranormal accounts cluster on the third floor and in the areas around the pool. The central story involves a boy, described as around ten years old, seen wet and wrapped in a towel near Room 310, which overlooks the pool. The most common version of the account gives the date of the drowning as 1936, but the hotel's pool was not installed until Herbert Bayer's 1947 renovation. No independent documentation of a child drowning at the Jerome has been located. The story circulates widely in Colorado haunted-hotel literature; the chronological inconsistency is not typically addressed in those sources.
Hotel management has consistently declined to promote the supernatural accounts. A spokesperson told the Aspen Times that the hotel tries to 'downplay the stories,' which makes the persistence and detail of visitor reports notable.
Two other figures appear in staff and guest accounts. Henry O'Callister is described as a silver-era prospector who fell in love with a wealthy Boston woman named Clarissa Wellington; her family separated them, and he deteriorated and died. Guests report sobbing in the halls at night and the figure of a man in period clothing. Katie Kerrigan, a sixteen-year-old maid employed in 1892, allegedly died of pneumonia after coworkers told her they had drowned her kitten in a pond. Staff describe finding unmade rooms made, sinks filling with soapy water, and sheets pulled in unoccupied rooms. Travel writer Chris Gray Faust documented several of these anomalies in a 2010 account.
Notable Entities
Auberge-managed luxury hotel in the 1889 Wheeler building. Third-floor rooms, particularly Room 310, have the strongest concentration of reported paranormal activity. Hotel management officially downplays supernatural accounts.
The Jerome Bar (J-Bar) is open to the public and served as Hunter S. Thompson's de facto office during his 1970 Aspen Sheriff campaign. The bar has been a social center of Aspen since the hotel opened in 1889.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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