About this property
The Mizpah Hotel is a historic hotel in Tonopah, Nevada, U.S. It is a member of Historic Hotels of America, the official program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The Mizpah and the nearby Belvada Building, both five stories high, shared the title of tallest building in Nevada until 1927. The hotel was named after the Mizpah Mine and was the social hub of Tonopah. The hotel was pre-dated by the Mizpah Saloon, which opened in 1907, and was the first permanent structure in Tonopah. The hotel was financed by George Wingfield, George S. Nixon, Cal Brougher and Bob Govan and designed by George E. Holesworth of Reno, Nevada (other sources state that the architect was Morrill J. Curtis). Brougher in particular was involved with the Belmont, Tonopah, Midway and Tonopah Mining Company and the Tonopah Divide Mining Company. Brougher owned the Tonopah Banking Corporation, which had an office in the lobby of the 1905 building, and was a director of the Bank of Italy in San Francisco. According to legend, Wyatt Earp kept the saloon, Jack Dempsey was a bouncer, and Howard Hughes married Jean Peters at the Mizpah. But Wyatt Earp left Tonopah before the Mizpah was built, Hughes was married in Tonopah, but not at the Mizpah, and Dempsey asserted he was never a bouncer. The hotel nevertheless features the Jack Dempsey Room and the Wyatt Earp Bar. The reinforced concrete hotel was faced with stone on the front and brick on the sides and rear. The neighboring three-story Brougher-Govan Block, with rooms on the upper floors, served as the first Mizpah and remains connected. Cast iron columns were used in the windows and fire escapes. The three and five story buildings are joined with a wood stairway crowned with a skylight. Steam heat was provided, along with the first elevator in Tonopah. The hotel is said to house a ghost deemed the Lady in Red by hotel guests who have experienced her presence. Legend says that the Lady in Red is the ghost of a prostitute who was murdered on the fifth floor of the hotel by a jealous ex-boyfriend. Another widely accepted description of the events is that The Lady in Red had been caught cheating by her husband at the hotel after he had missed a train, who then proceeded to kill her in a jealous rage. The Lady in Red haunting of the Mizpah was featured in season 5, episode 2 of Ghost Adventures on the Travel Channel. Other ghosts are also said to exist there and USA Today ranked the hotel first in its 2018 list of “Best Haunted Hotels in the US” as determined by readers. It maintained a spot of seventh on that same list in 2022.
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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).
Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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Questions about this property
When was Mizpah Hotel listed on the National Register?
Mizpah Hotel was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on July 6, 1978.
What type of historic resource is Mizpah Hotel?
Mizpah Hotel is classified as a building in the National Register of Historic Places.
What is the period of significance for Mizpah Hotel?
The period of significance for Mizpah Hotel is recorded as the industrial era.
Can I research the history near Mizpah Hotel?
Yes. Aubrey Research reports search National Register listings, battlefield records, land patents, and other primary historical sources within any radius of a US address. A report for an address near Mizpah Hotel will include this listing and all other historical records in the area.
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