A Second Empire Victorian hotel moved brick-by-brick from Silver Cliff to Cañon City in 1890, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and long associated with reports of a little girl's ghost in the hallways.
631 Main St, Cañon City, CO 81212
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Building is currently closed and not open for interior visits; exterior is viewable from the public sidewalk at no cost.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Flat Main Street sidewalk; exterior viewing only.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1879 · Listed on the National Register of Historic Places (recorded as Powell House/St. Cloud Canon Hotel) · Originally built 1879 in Silver Cliff during Colorado silver boom · Relocated brick-by-brick approximately 30 miles from Silver Cliff to Cañon City around 1890 · Rare surviving Second Empire Victorian commercial building in Colorado
The St. Cloud Hotel was built in 1879 in Silver Cliff, Colorado, a silver mining town in the Wet Mountains that experienced a brief but intense boom following ore discoveries in the late 1870s. The building's Second Empire Victorian design—characterized by its mansard roof and decorative detailing—reflected the ambitions of a town that briefly rivaled Leadville in mining output.
When Silver Cliff's silver economy collapsed, the hotel's owners faced the choice of abandonment or relocation. The decision to move the building to Cañon City was executed with the remarkable step of disassembling and transporting the brick structure and reassembling it on Cañon City's Main Street, where it reopened around 1890. This relocation, documented in History Colorado's National Register records, is what makes the building architecturally and historically significant: it is a surviving Second Empire Victorian structure that physically traveled from one Colorado town to another during the mining era.
Denver Westword included the St. Cloud among its list of ten most haunted places in Colorado. The hotel operated until 2007, when it closed. The building has since sat vacant on Main Street, its Second Empire facade visible from the public sidewalk. The History Colorado / NRHP listing records it as the Powell House/St. Cloud Canon Hotel.
Sources
The haunted tradition at the St. Cloud Hotel centers on a child apparition: a young girl described as playing with a ball in the hotel's upper-floor corridors. The apparition was reportedly encountered by multiple staff members during the building's operating years, though no historical identity has been established for the figure in the sources reviewed.
According to hauntedcolorado.net, which documented the hotel's paranormal reputation during its operating period, staff reported additional phenomena: television sets activating without anyone in the room, lights switching on and off without manual input, and chairs that were found stacked in arrangements different from how they had been left. These are among the more operationally specific categories of reported hotel paranormal activity—phenomena noticed because they required someone to clean up or reset what had been moved.
The Denver Westword, one of Colorado's most widely read alternative publications, included the St. Cloud Hotel among its ten most haunted places in Colorado—a list that carried the hotel's reputation to a regional audience. The building's 2007 closure ended the accumulation of new staff reports, but the documented history of the operating years has given the vacant building a persistent place in Colorado ghost lore.
Notable Entities
View the exterior of this rare Second Empire Victorian building, constructed in 1879 in Silver Cliff and relocated brick-by-brick to Cañon City in 1890. The National Register property is one of the most architecturally distinctive closed historic hotels in southern Colorado.
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