Boulder Hot Springs Hotel

The story

Boulder Hot Springs sits in the Boulder Valley of Jefferson County, Montana, on the eastern side of the Rockies, with the Elkhorn Mountains rising to the north. The property counts at least thirty hot springs plus a sulphur spring, scattered through the ravines behind the buildings, and that water is the whole reason the place exists.

The hotel's own published history credits James E. Riley with opening a saloon and bathhouse on the springs in 1863, serving the miners who had flooded into the territory. (The 1979 National Register nomination puts the first crude tavern and bathhouse at 1865 and admits that no picture of it survives; we follow the more detailed official history here.) Riley enlarged the business into a hotel in 1881-82 but died of smallpox in September 1882, and the work was completed by Abel Quaintance and his partner Griswold. The nomination dates the oldest part of the present building to 1883.

Between 1888 and 1891 a new phase under C. K. Kerrick (C. W. Kerrick in the nomination) wrapped the older structure in an L-shaped Queen Anne hotel: white clapboard, wood-shingle roof, gabled third floor, long turned-column veranda and a four-story bell tower with a pointed spire. Kerrick renamed it the Hotel May around 1890.

The building's present look comes from James A. Murray of Butte, who bought the resort in 1909. In 1909-1910 he added an east wing linked to the old hotel by the veranda and remade the whole complex in the California Mission (Spanish Colonial Revival) idiom: curved dormers, pressed-iron coping, coarse dashed stucco over the clapboard, arched openings along the veranda and a bulbous cap in place of the old spire. A new bathhouse and a plunge also date from around 1910. An open-air brick plunge built sometime between 1912 and 1927 was wrecked by an earthquake in 1935 and never used again.

Inside, the 1910 interiors were richly finished: Oregon fir beams, Tiffany lighting, hand-stenciled walls and ceilings painted in the 1920s by Richard A. Stein, a card room in Chinese gold-leaf pattern, a backlit stained-glass back bar and a second-floor dance hall later carved into guest rooms. The official history notes a gambling era in the early 1930s. From 1940 the property ran as the Diamond S Ranchotel under C. L. "Pappy" Smith. In the 1970s Stuart Lewin gave it the name Boulder Hot Springs and, together with Montana state historian Edrie Vinson, nominated it to the National Register, which listed the hotel and 240 acres of associated land on January 12, 1979. At that time the building was rated fair to deteriorated, and storms in November 1978 had damaged the bathhouse. The hotel closed in 1989, changed hands in 1990 and reopened in 1991.

The legend

The hotel's ghost lore is thin and should be read that way. The one named spirit is "Simone," said to be a prostitute killed inside the hotel. Wikipedia repeats the claim and attributes it to a Billings Gazette feature by Alana Listoe, published on October 31, 2011 under the headline "Some say ghosts frequent Boulder Hot Springs." The plural in that headline hints that more than one presence was discussed, but the article sits behind a paywall and its details could not be checked for this page.

What we can say honestly: no date, surname or record of a murder has been found to back up the Simone story, and 2011 is the earliest dated mention located. The setting is plausible enough for such a tale to take root, since the resort began as a miners' saloon and later went through a gambling period, but no source ties Simone to an actual event. No specific phenomena (sounds, apparitions, cold spots) are documented in our sources, and the resort's official history page says nothing about ghosts. We did not find the property in the Ghost Adventures episode list, and no televised investigation was found. Treat Simone as a local story told in a Halloween-season newspaper feature, not as history.

What remains today

The complex survives largely as Murray left it in 1910: the stuccoed Mission-style hotel with its curved gables, arched veranda and capped tower, the east wing, the bathhouse, an outdoor plunge behind the hotel (substantially rebuilt in 1974), a storeroom, and a barn, stables and corral that appear to date from about 1909. The ruined earthquake-damaged plunge was also recorded in 1979. The listed area takes in 240 acres, and the view from the veranda still runs across hay fields toward the Elkhorn peaks and the Continental Divide, a setting the nomination described as essentially unchanged since the resort was founded. The property is listed on the National Register of Historic Places (#79001403). Today a limited partnership runs it as a combined hotel, soaking bathhouse and retreat center.

Visiting

Boulder Hot Springs is a working business, not an abandoned ruin, so the legal way to see it is as a guest or soaking visitor during its opening hours. It lies southeast of the town of Boulder. Check the official website for current hours, lodging and pool rules before going, as retreat bookings can affect access. There is no ghost tour, and staff are not running a haunted attraction, so please respect guests and private areas of the hotel. Those curious about Simone should ask politely rather than wander into closed wings.

Sources

1. National Register nomination #79001403 (texte intégral) — U.S. National Park Service · Public record
2. National Register of Historic Places file (NRHP #79001403) — U.S. National Park Service · Public domain (U.S. government)
3. USGS 1:250000-scale Quadrangle for Butte, MT 1958 — U.S. Geological Survey, 1958 · Public domain (USGS)
4. USGS 1:250000-scale Quadrangle for Helena, MT 1889 — U.S. Geological Survey, 1889 · Public domain (USGS)
5. USGS 1:62500-scale Quadrangle for Boulder, MT 1954 — U.S. Geological Survey, 1954 · Public domain (USGS)
6. "History" — Boulder Hot Springs (official site) — Boulder Hot Springs (official site
7. "List of Ghost Adventures episodes" — Wikipedia — Wikipedia
8. "Some say ghosts frequent Boulder Hot Springs" (Alana Listoe, 31 Oct 2011) — Billings Gazette (not read directly) — Billings Gazette (not readable; title and date via Wikipedia
9. Wikipedia article — Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Text written by AI from the sources above and checked by a separate AI fact-check (how we work). Images: credits and licenses under each picture.