Welcome to the New Sheridan Hotel in Telluride, Colorado, founded in 1891.
The New Sheridan Hotel in Telluride, Colorado
© Deborah Erickson
A few lucky prospectors found a dazzling lode of gold ore, embedded deep in the heart of the San Juan Mountains. The mine was high, the valley floor low. This meant that all of that ore had to be shipped on winding mule trails, down steep wagon roads, or sometimes, in tram buckets descending on cables from the heights. Towns soon surrounded the mills that were built on the valley floor. Such a place was Telluride in 1887.
“TO HELL YOU RIDE”—A long-ago story tells of a train conductor who startled his passengers, bound for the new mountain community by yelling, “To hell you ride!” Indeed, there was more than a little hell playing out in Telluride!
A postcard from Telluride in times past
(Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons)
The dusty streets were crowded with fortune-seekers. There was a saloon on every corner as it was thought that the dry air at almost 9,000 feet induced an overpowering thirst in a man. Fights proliferated, be they spurred by drink, women, gambling or perhaps a touch of boredom that surfaced during the difficult winter months. Gunfights and murders were almost commonplace. Telluride seemed to have it all. As the gold and silver mines flourished, the town’s population grew to almost 5,000 in 1890.
Only the construction of a fine hotel would fill the void in the otherwise booming and often disorderly town. On the scene in 1891 with this vision in mind were German Gus Brickson and Swede Max Hippler; they built a wooden, two-story structure called the Sheridan Hotel. A fire raged through town in 1894, destroying the Sheridan. A three-story brick hotel was quickly erected on the lot next door to the remains of the old building. The “new” hotel was renamed the New Sheridan Hotel and it has remained “new” ever since.
LOOKS CAN BE DECEIVING—Although plain and unimposing on the exterior, Brickson and Hippler finished their hotel quite superbly on the inside. The richly paneled lobby, opening just off the street, was decorated with finely crafted glass-front cases that contained ore samples extracted from the nearby mines. It was a clever bit of marketing to showcase the minerals that financed Telluride.
A mirror-bedecked room just off the lobby—the American Room—served as a dining room with food that rivaled meals served in Denver’s Brown Palace. Another restaurant, the Continental Room, was divided into sixteen booths, each separated with plush velvet curtains and equipped with a call button to summon a member of the wait staff. The Continental had the reputation—perhaps because of its discretely located back entrance—of being the site of many an illicit rendezvous between town gents and their mistresses. The old story goes that a man took his wife to the American Room and his mistress to the Continental. Indeed, the New Sheridan Hotel gained a reputation as being the town’s social center in the 1890s for townsfolk and visiting businessmen alike.
The hotel’s lobby © Deborah Erickson
The New Sheridan Bar, located next door to the hotel proper, remains much like it was when it opened in 1895. A massive mahogany bar, imported from Austria and hauled to Telluride by freight wagon, was bedazzled with leaded glass and ornate light fixtures. From a mezzanine area above the bar, musicians performed to the delight of patrons in the bar and both dining rooms.
The San Juan Mountains near Telluride
© Deborah Erickson
CIRCUMSTANCES LEAD THE TOWN DOWN THEN BACK UP—The Silver Crash of 1893 caused the miners to move on, leaving the population of Telluride at only a few hundred. The isolation of Telluride amidst towering 13,000 and 14,000-foot peaks played a huge role in the town’s fairly meager existence. A devastating labor strike in 1903 and an even more devastating mud slide several years later all wrote chapters in the demise of Telluride and ultimately the New Sheridan. The onset of Prohibition sounded the death knell for the hotel. It closed in 1925 and remained boarded up for nearly 40 years.
In the early 1970s, Telluride’s ski industry was born with the building of the first ski lift on a nearby slope. Clashes between town old-timers, ’60s-era hippies and entrepreneurs were inevitable, but the resulting economic changes were enough to revitalize the nearly empty town.
Guestroom at the New Sheridan Hotel
(Photo courtesy of the New Sheridan Hotel)
The New Sheridan Hotel was a beneficiary of this upswing. Much like the visionaries who built the original hotel, a redeemer was soon to come on the scene. An overdue and detailed renovation by the new owner in 1995 restored this Colorado treasure to its former glory, perhaps even surpassing it. Today the hotel graciously welcomes winter skiers and summer travelers, opening her doors to a period of history unsurpassed in the Rocky Mountain West.
The main street in Telluride
© Deborah Erickson
Stand, if you will, at the New Sheridan’s front door. If you look past the cars and bicycles on the street, you can almost hear the rumble of wagon wheels from that by-gone era. The vitality—past and present—of Telluride’s New Sheridan Hotel beckons you.
The New Sheridan Hotel
© Deborah Erickson
IF YOU VISIT—
The New Sheridan Hotel
231 W. Colorado Avenue
Telluride, Colorado 81435
800-200-1891
Website: www.newsheridan.com
For information about the town of Telluride: www.visittelluride.com
Free gondola ride: The towns of Telluride and nearby Mountain Village are linked by a spectacular, 13-minute ride on a FREE gondola, the first and only free public transportation system of its kind in the United States. This popular scenic attraction provides access to hiking and biking trails in the summer and the ski slopes in the winter.
The free gondola takes visitors up the mountain above Telluride.
(Photo courtesy of visittelluride.com)
- Yes, this gondola is entirely free. You may ride as many times as you would like.
- In town, access the Telluride station at the base of the mountain at the south end of Oak Street.
- You can exit at St. Sophia station or keep riding until you arrive in Mountain Village.
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