Haunted Hotels of Southern Colorado

Holy Moses, I’ve struck it rich!” yelled Nicholas Creede when his pick smacked into a large rock and hit a fabulous silver deposit. This discovery launched Colorado’s last great silver boom. Creede had been prospecting in the Rocky Mountains for twenty years, occasionally making a fairly rich strike and then selling it. He named this 1890 claim the Holy Moses and leased it to financier and railroad magnate David Moffat. Creede resumed prospecting and found two more rich claims nearby, which he called the Amethyst and Ethel.

These strikes brought hundreds of prospectors to the upper Rio Grande Valley, where the new camp of Creede was squeezed between narrow, rocky cliffs on both sides of Willow Creek. Tents and pine shanties popped up along Creede’s corkscrew Main Street while some, hoping to beat the exorbitant price of a lot, built their shacks on planks they laid across Willow Creek. This was dangerous because heavy rains and spring’s melting snow swelled the creek, overflowing its banks. Every year, residents shuddered as threatening torrents of water roared down the canyon, sweeping cabins and debris along.

The Denver & Rio Grande extended a line to Creede, and the first train chugged into town, jammed with hopeful prospectors, self-important investors, young mining school graduates in long fur coats and new boots. They sat on one another’s laps and on the arms of the seats, stood in the aisles, and hung onto the outside platforms. The boom was on, and seemingly overnight, Creede’s population exploded to ten thousand. The camp was a melting pot of miners, gamblers, con men, fortune hunters, speculators, and parlor girls. As more silver strikes were made, Creede’s “suburbs” of Bachelor, Jimtown, Amethyst, Stumptown, Weaver, and Sunnyside spilled down the narrow gorge and enjoyed brief booms.

Creede was firmly established with its mines, saloons, gambling halls, restaurants, and bawdy houses operating around the clock. Soapy Smith, a notorious con man, ran games of chance at his Orleans Club, as well as handling his duties as Creede’s major crime boss.

Bob Ford, the notorious “man who shot Jessie James,” opened the Exchange dancehall and saloon, but he was a rowdy, mean drunk, and after shooting out the town’s streetlights once too often, he was ordered out of town by the vigilance committee. Bob spent months writing letters to the vigilantes apologizing and begging for permission to return to Creede. He would have been better off staying away from there, because shortly after he returned, his Exchange dancehall was destroyed in the June 1892 fire. After the ashes cooled, Ford opened a tent saloon on the site, but the next day, he was killed by one shotgun blast from Ed O’Kelley. The town’s criminal element paid for Ford’s funeral and burial in the Shotgun Hill cemetery. A huge crowd gave him a noisy send-off, and the party lasted until the champagne and whiskey ran out. O’Kelley was convicted of second-degree murder, and after serving a few years in Territorial Prison, he was pardoned.

The ladies were popular in Creede, where Lulu Slain and her friend, the Mormon Queen, operated parlor houses competing with several other madams. There was pretty Creede Lillie, Slanting Annie, and Rose Vastine, who was so tall, she was nicknamed “Timberline.” Poker Alice Tubbs, a petite blond, was a tough, cigar-chomping, gun-toting gambler who dealt poker and faro in the gambling halls. Sharpshooter Calamity Jane wandered in from South Dakota and made the rounds of the gambling halls, playing poker and proving that she could out-drink any man at the bar.

Bat Masterson joined the rush to Creede, where he managed a saloon and gambling house, instead of hiring on as a lawman. His reputation as a formidable opponent was well known in Creede, where a correspondent for the St. Louis Globe Democrat wrote that Bat was “recognized in the camp as the nerviest man of all the fighters here.…All the toughs and thugs fear him.… Let an incipient riot start, and all that is necessary to quell it is the whisper, ‘Here comes Masterson.’”

Young Jack Dempsey lived in the neighboring mining camp of Bachelor, where his mother operated a boardinghouse. When she groaned about her load of endless work, young Jack promised to buy her a mansion someday, and he kept that promise when he became the World Heavyweight Boxing Champion in 1919.

Creede rebuilt after the 1892 fire, replacing the flimsy, wooden structures with solid brick buildings that were lit by electricity. In 1893, when Mineral County was created by the legislature, a rival town was named county seat, infuriating Creede’s citizens. One dark night, a group from Creede stealthily ventured into the rival town, broke into its new, wood frame courthouse and grabbed all the county records. Then they completely dismantled the courthouse itself and hauled all the lumber back to Creede. They reassembled the courthouse on Main Street, and after that escapade, the Mineral County seat remained in Creede. It survived several destructive fires and flash floods that washed many other historic buildings down the canyon.

Hard rock mining kept Creede going through the Depression and two world wars, producing more than $700 million worth of precious metals. In 1985, when the price of silver dropped, the last operating mine, the Homestake, closed. Today, Creede is much quieter than it was when Cy Warman, editor of the Creede Candle, wryly wrote, “It’s day all day in the daytime, and there is no night in Creede.” Now Colorado’s last and wildest boom town is a haven for artists and writers, rednecks, and old hippies. Eclectic shops and galleries line Main Street, which runs directly up the dark chasm to the mines, which have over two thousand miles of underground tunnels. The popular Creede Repertory Theater presents musicals, historical dramas, and comedies in the old opera house during the summer.

Phillip Zang, a member of a Denver family of brewers, opened the P.H. Zang Brewing Company for Creede’s thirsty prospectors, and then he built the Zang Hotel in 1892. There were five guest rooms upstairs and five downstairs, with a dining room and a saloon. None of Creede’s hotels was fancy, but this one was considered the finest, and there was never a vacancy.

Zang added an annex with a barbershop where a grimy miner could get a shave and a scrub for twenty-five cents. Just behind the hotel, was the brothel operated by Creede Lil. The hotel was home to Bob Ford, Poker Alice, and Soapy Smith until Bat Masterson’s arrival convinced the conman to head for Skagway, Alaska.

Surprisingly, the newly built wood frame hotel survived the disastrous fire of 1892 but was destroyed in the fire of 1906. Phillip Zang died in 1899, and the hotel’s operation was taken over by his son, John, and his wife. They ran the hotel well and rebuilt quickly after the fire of 1906. Then disaster struck in the summer of 1911, when a murder and the resulting scandal changed everything.

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The Creede Hotel hasn’t changed much since 1892 when Phillip Zang first opened its doors. Courtesy of Wendy Williams.

On June 17, 1911, citizens awoke to the front page of the Creede Candle screaming, “Murder! John Zang Shot and Instantly Killed by Mrs. Lefevre at Her Residence.” The newspaper article reported that the respected businessman had gone calling upon Mrs. Michael Lefevre, whose husband was out of town. John Zang, who was fifty-five years old, made “unwelcome advances” upon the pretty twenty-five-year-old woman. Mrs. Lefevre said she rebuffed him several times, but her dress was torn when Zang became aggressive. She grabbed a .45 Colt revolver and shot Zang in the face, killing him immediately. “Mr. Zang’s side of the story will never be known,” the editor of the Candle noted somewhat skeptically and predicted that Mrs. Lefevre would be acquitted on grounds of self-defense. The article concluded, “May the soul of John Zang rest in peace is the wish of all who knew him.”

After a well-publicized trial, the self-confessed murderess was acquitted, but plenty of tongues continued wagging over the notorious murder of John Zang. His wife was so overcome by grief and embarrassment that she attempted suicide. The attempt failed, and after a time, Mrs. Zang resumed her role as a hotel owner. Eight years after her husband’s murder, she sold the hotel, remarried, and left Creede for good. Over the intervening years, the hotel had several ownership changes, and its name was changed from the Zang Hotel to the Creede Hotel. Its old saloon has always been a popular hangout for miners, drifters, and local politicians—just as it was a century earlier.

With so many colorful guests at this hotel, it’s no wonder a few have decided to stay on. An employee taking photographs of the dining room was astonished when she captured the image of a woman in a Victorian dress in an old mirror. Sometimes footsteps are heard wandering around on the roof, especially during the winter. When someone goes up to look, the snow is pristine, without any visible marks. The aroma of cigar smoke is occasionally evident in the Poker Alice Room, and loud banging is heard in Calamity Jane’s when no one is around. Many employees and old-timers say that Phillip Zang, who built the hotel, is still around the premises, checking on his business.

A hotel manager saw the apparition of a woman approach the front desk and chat with the clerk for a few minutes. Then she just faded away. The manager has often heard someone whistling in the old saloon after hours when all the customers are gone. Hotel employees say they often feel like they are being watched while they’re working, and there have been occasional glimpses of a shadowy figure, especially early in the morning.

One employee, who was carrying a tray loaded with dishes to the kitchen, was surprised to see the door quietly open before her. She entered the kitchen, and the door closed silently behind her. When this happened, there was no one near.

Guests are asked to record their impressions of their stay in the hotel’s journal, and several people have said they heard the sounds of bells in the Calamity Jane Room. Others “sensed a presence” while they were staying in that room. One guest who spent the night with her husband in the Poker Alice Room wrote that a “ghostly presence” had joined them. She said that they had been awakened several times by the sound of glasses falling off the nightstand. In the morning, there were seven glasses scattered around on the floor near their bed.

Footsteps are often heard on the stairs and in the upstairs hall—of course, no one is there. Occasionally, a wispy white figure is glimpsed upstairs, rounding a corner, and then it disappears. The owner, David Toole, said he’s sensed an unseen presence around the hotel and remarked, “I feel that they appreciate me taking care of the place, and they leave me alone.”