Hotel Colorado: Bell Tower Suites and a Sealed Room

Reviewed by Josh N · Updated August 27, 2026 · How we verify

The Hotel Colorado sits across the Colorado River from the hot springs that made Glenwood Springs famous, a cream-brick pile with twin bell towers that has been taking guests since the summer of 1893. Presidents used it as a mountain retreat, the Navy filled it with wounded sailors, and staff and guests have spent decades trading stories about a screaming chambermaid, a little girl with a ball, and an elevator that travels empty. The history is documented. The rest is testimony, and this piece keeps the two apart.

Quick Facts on the Hotel Colorado

• Opened June 10, 1893, in Glenwood Springs, and one of the oldest hotels in the state.
• Built for silver magnate and banker Walter Devereux; construction began in 1891 at a cost of $850,000.
• Designed as a replica of the Villa de Medici by the New York firm Boring & Tilton.
• Served as a U.S. Naval Convalescent Hospital during the Second World War.
• Added to Historic Hotels of America, a program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, in April 2007.
• Still a working hotel. You can book a room.

Walter Devereux’s $850,000 Italianate Gamble

Devereux made his money in silver and banking, and he spent it on a resort hotel that had no business being that grand in a small Rocky Mountain spa town. Construction started in 1891. The architects were William A. Boring and Edward Lippincott Tilton, whose firm produced a deliberate replica of the Villa de Medici. Boring was no provincial hire: a member of the National Academy of Design, he designed the immigration station at Ellis Island and numerous buildings along Park Avenue before becoming dean of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation.

The building mixes local and imported. The cream-colored Roman brick and the Peach Blow Sandstone came from nearby. The 12,000 yards of carpet and 2,000 rose bushes did not. When the doors opened on June 10, 1893, the program ran to a fireworks display, an orchestra in the ballroom, and dinner at midnight for the 300 couples in attendance.

The Little White House of the West

The hotel became a summer retreat almost immediately, and extended stays by Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft earned it the nickname “the little White House of the West.” One of the most repeated stories attached to the place concerns Roosevelt’s 1905 visit: the teddy bear is alleged to have been invented there when the hotel’s maids presented him with a stuffed bear pieced together from scraps of fine material. Treat that as a claim the hotel is proud of rather than a settled matter of record.

Technology arrived early too. On September 16, 1925, live music and speech were broadcast from the hotel’s ballroom to Denver radio station KOA by way of telephone.

Then the register turned military. In 1942 the hotel was leased to the United States Navy for use as a hospital. The U.S. Naval Convalescent Hospital was commissioned on July 5, 1943, and had treated more than 6,500 patients by the end of 1945. It was decommissioned in 1946. Any building that spends three years as a convalescent ward accumulates a certain weight, and visitors who go looking for atmosphere tend to find it in that stretch of the story.

Capone, Doc Holliday and a Silent Film Crew

The guest list reads like a cross-section of American myth. Doc Holliday, Buffalo Bill and Molly Brown all passed through. So did railroad men David Moffat and Jay Gould, heiress Evalyn Walsh McLean, and presidents Herbert Hoover, Warren Harding and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. On the other side of the ledger sit Al Capone and “Diamond Jack” Alterie. Actor Tom Mix stayed during the filming of The Great K & A Train Robbery in the summer of 1926. In 2003 a time capsule was buried in the courtyard, set to be opened in 2043.

The Chambermaid, the Bell Towers and the Girl with the Ball

Several distinct figures turn up in accounts from guests and staff. A young girl in Victorian clothing is reported playing with a ball. A female figure is said to peer over sleeping male guests. A male presence is associated with the fifth floor. The two suites in the bell towers are frequently reported to be haunted, which makes them a popular request for anyone visiting with more than a good night’s sleep in mind. Alongside the apparitions come the ordinary furniture of a haunted hotel: the elevator moving on its own with nobody aboard, strange smells, and sounds without an obvious source.

The best known story is grimmer. Screams of a woman are often reported throughout the building, and they are attributed to a chambermaid said to have been caught in a love triangle and murdered by one of her lovers. The room in which she is believed to have died was once a guestroom. It has since been turned into a storage room because of the history of reported activity there. No name, no date and no documented case accompanies the tale in the hotel’s recorded history, so it belongs firmly in the legend column, however often it is retold.

A wallpaper story also circulates about room 551. In that account, paper hung during redecoration was found neatly rolled up the next morning, again and again, until a single sample was left in place, and it is said to be there still. It is a good story with no paper trail behind it. What is on record is that in September 2006, CCPI Paranormal Investigations visited the hotel and recorded two areas of higher electromagnetic energy: one in the corridor in front of room 325, the other outside room 551. Elevated electromagnetic readings in a building constructed in the 1890s and wired repeatedly since are not evidence of a ghost. They are a measurement, and it is worth noting only because it happens to land at a door people already talk about.

Staying at the Hotel Colorado in Glenwood Springs

This is a functioning hotel, not a museum or a ticketed attraction, so the way in is simply to book a room. The bell tower suites carry the heaviest reputation and are the obvious choice for anyone chasing the stories, while the corridor outside room 325 and the fifth floor come up often enough in accounts to be worth a slow walk. The storage room associated with the chambermaid legend is not open to guests. Come for the 1893 architecture, the hot springs across the river and a lobby that has hosted two sitting presidents and at least one Chicago gangster, and treat whatever else happens as a bonus rather than a booking guarantee.

See Hotel Colorado for Yourself

Sources

• Hotel Colorado: The Spirit Lives On
• Unforgettable: Guests with Historic Personalities
• The New York Times
• Wikipedia: Hotel Colorado

Address: 526 Pine Street

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