The Stanley Hotel
The Stanley Hotel is a 140-room Georgian Revival hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, United States, about from the entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park. The hotel is considered as America's most haunted hotels. It includes a restaurant, spa, and bed-and-breakfast; with panoramic views of Lake Estes, the Rockies, and Longs Peak.
In May 2025, it was reported that the century-old hotel had been acquired by The Stanley Partnership for Art Culture and Education for $400 million. It is a public-private partnership formed by CEFCA, former owner John Cullen IV now chairman of the ownership board, and private bond investors.
Overview
It was built by Freelan Oscar Stanley, co-founder of the Stanley Motor Carriage Company. The property opened on July 4, 1909, as a resort for upper-class Easterners and a health retreat for sufferers of pulmonary tuberculosis. The hotel and its surrounding structures are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.The Stanley Hotel served as the inspiration for the Overlook Hotel in Stephen King's 1977 novel The Shining and its 1980 film adaptation. It was also a filming location for the related 1997 TV miniseries.
History
In 1903, the steam-powered car inventor Freelan Oscar Stanley was stricken with a life-threatening resurgence of tuberculosis. The most highly recommended treatment of the day was fresh, dry air with much sunlight and a hearty diet. Therefore, like many "lungers" of his day, Stanley resolved to take the curative air of the Rocky Mountains. He and his wife Flora arrived in Denver, Colorado, in March and, in June, on the recommendation of Dr. Sherman Grant Bonney, moved to Estes Park, Colorado, for the rest of the summer. Over the season, Stanley's health improved dramatically. Impressed by the beauty of the valley and grateful for his recovery, he decided to return every year. He lived to 91, dying of a heart attack in Newton, Massachusetts, one year after his wife, in 1940.By 1907, Stanley had recovered completely. However, not content with the rustic accommodations, lazy pastimes and relaxed social scene of their new summer home, Stanley resolved to turn Estes Park into a resort town. In 1907, construction began on the Hotel Stanley, a 48-room grand hotel that catered to the class of moderately wealthy urbanites who composed the Stanleys' social circle back east as well as to consumptives seeking the healthful climate.
The land was purchased in 1908 through the representatives of The 4th Earl of Dunraven and Mount-Earl, the Anglo-Irish peer who had originally acquired it by stretching the provisions of the Homestead Act of 1862 and pre-emption rights. Between 1872 and 1884, Lord Dunraven claimed of the Estes Valley in an unsuccessful attempt to create a private hunting preserve, making him one of the largest foreign holders of American lands. Unpopular with the local ranchers and farmers, Dunraven left the area in 1884, relegating the ranch to the management of an overseer. Dunraven's presence in Colorado was parodied in Charles King's novel Dunraven Ranch and James A. Michener's Centennial. His reputation was such that, when Stanley suggested "The Dunraven" as a name for his new hotel, 180 people signed a buckskin petition requesting that he name it for himself instead.
The main hotel and concert hall were completed in 1909 and the Manor in 1910. To bring guests from the nearest train depot in the foothills town of Lyons, Colorado, Stanley's car company produced a fleet of specially designed steam-powered vehicles called Mountain Wagons that seated multiple passengers. Stanley operated the hotel almost as a pastime, remarking once that he spent more money than he made each summer.
In 1926, Stanley sold his hotel to a private company incorporated for the sole purpose of running it. The venture failed and, in 1929, Stanley purchased his property out of foreclosure, selling it again in 1930 to fellow automobile and hotel magnate Roe Emery of Denver. Until 1983, the resort was only open during the summer, shutting down for the winter every year. The presence of the hotel and Stanley's own involvement greatly contributed to the growth of Estes Park and the creation of the Rocky Mountain National Park.
The hotel was a member of Historic Hotels of America, a program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, but is not part of the program as of 2022.
1911 gas explosion
Upon opening, the hotel was alleged to be one of the few in the world powered entirely by electricity. However, lack of available power induced the installation of an auxiliary gas lighting system in June 1911. On June 25 – the day after the pipes had been filled – an explosion occurred that injured a maid and damaged the structure, though contemporary newspaper articles differ on certain details.A brief article telegraphed to the York Dispatch and circulated by the Associated Press the following day said:
When the Lancaster paper reprinted the story, the editor noted that Elizabeth Wilson's name did not appear in local directories and she could not be identified as a Lancastrian. Similar accounts in local Colorado papers give the maid's name as Elizabeth Lambert and convey various dramatic details that are not confirmed by other articles. The most comprehensive and detailed article on the incident appeared on June 29 in the Fort Collins Express and seems to be the most accurate – positively refuting that the maid had been "hurled from the second to the first floor".
Frozen Dead Guy
In August 2023, Colorado's famous cryogenically frozen man, Bredo Morstøl, the inspiration for Colorado's annual Frozen Dead Guy Days festival, was relocated to the Stanley's ice house. The Alcor Life Extension Foundation assisted with relocating the body from its prior home in a Nederland shed and setting up a new cryonic chamber to contain the frozen corpse. The hotel named the ice house the "International Cryonics Museum" and offers paid tours to visit it.Architecture
The Stanley Hotel National Register Historic District contains 11 contributing structures including the main hotel, the concert hall, a carriage house, manager's cottage, gate house and The Lodgea smaller bed-and-breakfast originally called The Manor House. The buildings were designed by F.O. Stanley with the professional assistance of Denver architect T. Robert Wieger, Henry "Lord Cornwallis" Rogers, and contractor Frank Kirchoff. The site was chosen for its vantage overlooking the Estes valley and Long's Peak within the National Park. The main building, concert hall and Manor House are steel-frame structures on foundations of random rubble granite with clapboard siding and asphalt shingle roof. Originally, Stanley chose a yellow ocher color for the buildings' exteriors with white accents and trim. Lumber used in the structures was harvested from the areas of Bierstadt Lake and Hidden Valley in the future national park, and purchased from Kirchoff's Lumberyard in Denver and Bluff City Lumber Company of Pine Bluff, Arkansas. The granite was quarried from the Baldwin property near the confluence of Beaver Brook and the Big Thompson River. Non-local materials were brought to Lyons, Colorado by rail and thence to Estes Park by mule-drawn wagon.Upon opening in 1909, the hotel was alleged to be one of the first in the country to be fully electrified from the lighting to the kitchens. To supply his hotel with power, Stanley led the construction of the Fall River Hydroplant which also brought electricity to the town of Estes Park for the first time. Every guest room had a telephone and each pair of rooms shared an en suite bathroom with running water supplied by Black Canyon Creek, which had been dammed in 1906. Circa 1935, during Roe Emery's tenure as owner the ochre-colored siding was painted white and most of the original electro-gas fixtures were replaced.
Although the style of the hotel evokes the historical architecture of New England, the general form and layout are designed to accommodate contemporary notions of hygiene and comfort. Given Stanley's interest in architectural design and healthful living, he may have been inspired by the Carolina Hotel in Pinehurst, North Carolina, designed by Bertrand E. Taylor a national leader in hospital design and, like Stanley, a resident of Newton, Massachusetts. The parallels between the Carolina and the Stanley extend beyond style; the builder of the Carolina, James Walker Tufts, was a Boston soda magnate who initially developed Pinehurst as a health resort for people with pulmonary diseases. Whether or not Stanley had exposure to Taylor's work and ideas, it is certain that he was influenced by Dr. Sherman Grant Bonney of the University of Denver, a contemporary expert in the treatment of tuberculosis; Stanley's Estes Park summer house is illustrated in Bonney's book, Pulmonary Tuberculosis, and Stanley himself is acknowledged in the preface for his "interest and efficiency in connection with the photographic illustrations." Although the hotel never operated as a sanitarium per se, it was designed to be an optimal environment for pulmonary health. When the construction plans were announced, the Fort Collins Weekly Courier reported, " has been a favorite place for doctors to send the more robust of their patients, who were in shape to be braced up by the keen air and the considerable altitude, but it has not always been possible to get suitable accommodations and surroundings for them. With the park turned into a vast pleasure ground, and ample provisions for the best food products, all precious objections will be dissipated." Accordingly, the facilities were sited and designed to meet the requirements expounded in Bonney's book. For instance, according to Bonney,
This text is accompanied by a photograph of "the delightful view afforded from the porches of cottages for consumptives in Estes Park, Colorado." The hotel also provided the ample porches, ventilation, southern exposure, and appetizing food recommended in Bonney's book.
The style of the Stanley Hotel campus is Colonial Revival. The strong symmetrical arrangement of the primary facade, and the classically derived ornamental articulations such as the two-stage octagonal cupola, Palladian window, fanlights, dormers, swan's neck pediments, scroll brackets, paired Tuscan columns, oval ox-eye windows, and elaborately turned balusters are all stylistic hallmarks of the so-called American Georgian and Federal Styles. The clapboard siding and carved wood elements are characteristic of New England's regional building practices. And yet, these features are modified and arranged to accommodate the tastes and lifestyles of the early twentieth century.
The style of the hotel contrasts sharply with the rustic style used for the other hotels in Estes Park, before and after the Stanley's construction. However, it was not an uncommon choice for a hotel of the Stanley's size and quality in the time period. In general, the Colonial Revival symbolized the historical roots of modern American cultural values and the positive progress of American civilization. By this token, the Stanley Hotel was an expression of the modest gentility of the builder and his clientele, an advertisement for the modern comforts contained within it, and a beacon for the future of Estes Park as a respectable resort town. All of these connotations were heightened in contrast with the ruggedness of the Rocky Mountains and the rusticity of the other hotels in the area.