Ely's 1929 six-story hotel-casino, briefly Nevada's tallest building, whose 'Mickey Rooney Room' is tied to a friendly resident-ghost legend.
501 Aultman Street, Ely, NV 89301
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
$$
Historic hotel rooms generally moderately priced; casino floor and restaurant open to the public. See the hotel's website.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Six-story historic hotel with elevator; casino and restaurant on ground floor
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1929 · Opened July 7, 1929 as the tallest building in Nevada (until 1931) · Landmark stop on U.S. Route 50 ('the Loneliest Road in America') · Hosted celebrity guests including Mickey Rooney, Gary Cooper, and Lyndon B. Johnson · Continuously operating historic hotel-casino
The Hotel Nevada opened on July 7, 1929 at 501 Aultman Street in downtown Ely, in eastern Nevada's White Pine County. The six-story building was the tallest in the state until 1931, when Reno's El Cortez Hotel surpassed it. Built at a reported cost of around $400,000, it stood as the principal landmark in a remote mining and ranching region along what became U.S. Route 50.
The hotel became a regular stop for travelers crossing the Great Basin and hosted a long list of celebrity guests over the decades. Wikipedia and the hotel's own materials cite visitors including Mickey Rooney, Gary Cooper, Ingrid Bergman, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Evel Knievel; a walk-of-fame sidewalk outside the building commemorates notable guests. Many of the upstairs rooms are named for these figures.
The property has changed hands several times, including a brief closure in 1986-1987, and has operated under Gaughan Gaming ownership since 2014. The ground floor houses table games and a sportsbook, and a Denny's restaurant opened on site in 2017. With roughly 67 rooms, the hotel functions today as both a working casino and a heritage stop for travelers on the 'Loneliest Road in America,' retaining its 1929 character as the centerpiece of downtown Ely.
Sources
The best-known story at the Hotel Nevada is attached to the Mickey Rooney Room, a larger fourth-floor room named for the actor, who was among the hotel's many celebrity guests. Local lore describes a benign presence there — a 'friendly wraith' said to settle on the bed when no one else is in the room — and frames it as the most active of the building's reputed spirits. Guest accounts include a strange feeling on entering the room and being woken in the early-morning hours by unexplained sounds.
Beyond that room, accounts describe phantom footsteps echoing through the hallways, sudden cold spots, and lights or small objects behaving oddly. Wikipedia notes that sealed tunnels beneath the hotel are 'rumored by local residents to be haunted,' a detail that recurs in regional coverage. Nevada Public Radio's Desert Companion has included the Hotel Nevada in its haunted-Nevada travel features, and the building appears across regional ghost-tourism roundups.
The lore is consistently friendly in tone rather than menacing, which fits a building that has functioned for nearly a century as a welcoming highway stop. Reports are presented as guest and staff experiences rather than verified events, and no specific deceased individual is named as the source of the activity.
Notable Entities
Media Appearances
Book a room in the 1929 hotel, where many rooms are named for past celebrity guests. The fourth-floor Mickey Rooney Room is the room most often tied to the hotel's paranormal lore. Reservations are made through the hotel's own website.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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