Rochester Hotel

A historic hotel built in 1892 during the silver boom, located in downtown Durango's historic district. Each room is themed after a Western movie. The hotel has been featured on television shows including Frontier Tastes and Tales.

The Rochester Hotel was built in 1892 as the Peeples Hotel during Durango's silver mining boom, catering to miners, salesmen, and tourists arriving on the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad. A woman named Mary Finn later purchased the establishment and renamed it The Rochester in 1905. The hotel has operated continuously for well over a century on Main Avenue in downtown Durango, and today it is decorated with Western film memorabilia -- movie posters, antiques, and themed rooms named after classic Western films, giving the hotel a unique character that blends its frontier history with Hollywood glamour.

The most actively haunted room is 204, known as the John Wayne Room, which has generated reports from guests, staff, and visiting psychics for decades. Housekeeping staff have consistently reported a strange, unsettling feeling when cleaning the room. Doors lock from the inside when no one is in the room, and amenities are found rearranged despite no guests being present. In one notable incident, actor and jazz musician Bill Henderson changed his room after he claimed that John Wayne began speaking to him directly through the television set. A psychic visiting in 2019 also detected the spirit of a little boy hiding in the corner of Room 204. The hotel has been featured on national television and is listed on the register of the one hundred most haunted hotels in America.

Beyond Room 204, guests and psychics have picked up on the presence of a lovely Victorian woman who stands at the top of the main staircase. She has been described as wearing a long white skirt with striping down her blouse, her hair pulled back in a loose bun, and she appears to be an innkeeper or manager -- perhaps Mary Finn herself, still overseeing her hotel. The scent of rose perfume drifts through the hallways at unexpected times, attributed to this female spirit. A little boy has been seen roaming the second floor hallway, separate from the entity detected in Room 204. The hotel's combination of documented paranormal activity, its Western film aesthetic, and its location on Durango's historic Main Avenue make it one of southwestern Colorado's most atmospheric overnight destinations.