Hotel Jerome

A luxurious silver-boom era hotel built in 1889 by Jerome B. Wheeler, former co-owner of Macy's department store. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1986. The hotel survived Aspen's bust years and remains the town's premier historic property.

The Hotel Jerome was built in 1889 by Jerome B. Wheeler, a former co-owner of Macy's Department Store who had invested heavily in Aspen's silver mining boom. Wheeler envisioned a grand hotel to rival the finest establishments in Europe, and the Jerome became the first hotel in the area to feature full electric lighting, indoor plumbing, and a grand ballroom. The hotel thrived during Aspen's silver heyday, hosting a parade of wealthy mining magnates and socialites, but the Silver Panic of 1893 devastated the town's economy almost overnight. As Aspen's population plummeted from 12,000 to 700, the Jerome endured decades of quiet decline, at one point even serving as a temporary morgue. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1986.

The hotel's most frequently encountered spirit is known as the Water Boy, the ghost of a ten-year-old boy who drowned in the hotel swimming pool in 1936. His presence is most active on the third floor, particularly in Room 310, which sits directly above the location of the original pool. In 1988, a guest in Room 310 called the front desk in a panic to report seeing a lost boy standing in her room, soaking wet and shivering with a towel wrapped around him. When she looked again, he had vanished, leaving only a trail of wet footprints that led nowhere. Hotel staff have reported similar encounters over the years -- a small figure in old-fashioned clothing wandering the hallways or standing near the pool before disappearing. Some employees have been so unsettled by experiences on the third floor that they refuse to work there.

The ghost of Henry O'Callister haunts the hotel corridors as well. O'Callister arrived in Aspen in 1889 as a silver prospector and reportedly unearthed a massive 1,500-pound silver nugget. Flush with wealth, he checked into the Hotel Jerome where he fell deeply in love with a guest named Clarissa Wellington, the daughter of a prominent Boston family. Her father refused to permit the match and sent Clarissa back east, never to return. Devastated, O'Callister spent his entire fortune on drink and died alone and heartbroken. Guests and staff report hearing the pained sobs of a man echoing through the hallways at night and seeing his ghostly figure wandering the corridors, eternally searching for his lost love.

The third named spirit is Katie Kerrigan, a sixteen-year-old chambermaid who worked at the hotel in 1892. Katie's beauty drew attention from wealthy guests, which bred fierce jealousy among her coworkers. One bitter winter night, a fellow maid told Katie the malicious lie that her pet kitten had fallen through the ice of a nearby frozen pond. Katie rushed outside without a coat to rescue it and fell through the ice herself. Though she was pulled from the water, she contracted pneumonia and died within days. Katie's spirit is now the hotel's resident prankster -- staff arrive to find guest rooms with bedsheets already turned down, soapy water inexplicably filling bathroom sinks, and rooms rearranged despite no one having entered them. In 2010, travel writer Chris Gray Faust reported that the heat in her room turned on by itself and she found both bathroom sinks filled with soapy water, though the sealed soap bars had not been touched.

Notable guests over the decades have included John Wayne, Gary Cooper, and Hunter S. Thompson. Today the Jerome operates as a luxury Auberge Resorts property and offers ghost town excursion experiences, embracing both its silver mining heritage and its spectral reputation as one of Colorado's most haunted hotels.