Nevada City Hotel

Spirits wander in the Nevada City Hotel. The 1860s front portion was a stage stop, its log walls disassembled and rebuilt where the original Nevada City Hotel once stood. A two-story employees’ dormitory, circa 1912, from the Canyon Hotel at Yellowstone Park form the hotel rooms. Guests have related odd incidents, but the most dramatic event happened in February 2001.  A Global Stage production crew filmed a scene of Henry Ibsen's Enemy of the People in the Nevada City Hotel’s saloon. The temperature dipped below zero in the unheated hotel. The guest rooms and corridors, upstairs and down, were locked. Fifty people—cast, crew, and local extras—crowded into the bar. State employee John Ellingsen remembers it well: “The director called ‘quiet on the set’ and the camera began to roll. Everyone held their breath, afraid to make a sound. Suddenly there were footsteps in the room above. ‘Cut! Who's up there?’ yelled the director. The crewmembers and I rushed upstairs. When I unlocked Room 7, the room over the bar, it was dark, cold, and empty. But the floor kept creaking, slowly and deliberately, during the entire filming. It was even captured on tape.” Several years ago on a Halloween haunted tour of the Nevada City Hotel, I led my group up the stairs of the old stage stop. We peeked in Room 7, and there was nothing out of the ordinary. Across the hall in Room 1 I turned the key in the lock. The door swung open. Two young boys behind me clutched at my jacket, and the adults gasped as we all heard the footsteps. They were coming from underneath the bed.


The second floor of the Nevada City Hotel