The new hotel opened in June 1908 as the area’s mining boom was cresting. The main floor of the four-story building was constructed of grey granite stones from Rocklin, California, while upper stories were made from reddish-brown brick. Hotel visitors entered the lobby by climbing a few steps up from the street onto the pillared porch. Above the porch were balconies on the second and third floors, from which the guests could view the street, town, and countryside. The floors of public rooms and the entry porch were covered by small, white mosaic tiles interspersed with black ones to create a geometric design. The roof was flat with a massive white cornice extending over the edge of the top of the building.  

 

The hotel featured 150 sleeping rooms and 45 suites with bathrooms, most of which were on the upper floors. The majority of the rooms shared a claw-foot bathtub and toilet with another room, but all had running water. An on-site power plant generated steam heat.   

 

The lobby had a mahogany reception desk, a public telephone booth, and an elevator, which ran at 300 feet per minute, one of the fastest in Nevada. A saloon was to the left of the lobby. The dining room, named The Grill, was the largest room in the building, extending the width of the building with plate glass windows that overlooked Crook Street.  

 

Mahogany paneling covered the walls of the lobby, saloon, and dining room. Around the lobby’s three iron pillars were circular, black, leather-buttoned banquettes; other furniture included big leather swivel chairs, couches and brass cuspidors or spittoons. Lights, including crystal electric lights, were suspended from the beamed ceiling.  

 

The estimated cost of the building was between $300,000 and $400,000. Manager and part owner J. Franklin (Frank) Douglas bought about $40,000 of furniture from Chicago for the main and second floors. The guest rooms were luxuriously furnished with carpeting, telephones, draperies, lamps, hardwood dressers with plate mirrors, cuspidors, and brass beds.

 

In December 1908, Casey Hotel owners George Wingfield and Casey McDannell joined the owners of the hotel, forming the Bonanza Hotel Company. With an exchange of stock and $200,000 in cash, the Bonanza Hotel Company became the owners of the Goldfield and Casey hotels. Wingfield was the major stockholder in the company and ultimate owner of the Goldfield Hotel. Wingfield was among the richest men in Nevada at the time. He was the owner of the Consolidated Mines Company in Goldfield, as well as banks, other hotels and numerous lucrative businesses in Nevada.

 

In 1923, Wingfield sold the hotel to Newton Crumley, owner of the Commercial Hotel in Elko. Crumley mined under the hotel unsuccessfully and sold it two years later. The hotel was bought and sold over the years, but it rarely turned a profit. The last paying guests of the hotel were officers and their families from the Tonopah Air Field, between 1943 and 1945. When World War II ended and the military personnel left Nevada, the hotel closed. It never reopened. 

 

Following a pattern common to many large, abandoned, historic buildings, the Goldfield Hotel has attracted legends about ghostly inhabitants. Stories describe a young woman named “Elizabeth” or “Gertie,” who is believed to have either been murdered or killed herself in room 109. Others have reported seeing the spirit of George Wingfield and smelling his cigar smoke near the lobby staircase. In 2001, the hotel was featured on Fox Family TV as one of the world’s scariest places.