Wyatt Earp never kept this saloon. Jack Dempsey was never its bouncer. Howard Hughes did not marry Jean Peters here. The hotel has rooms named after all three.
The Mizpah stands in Tonopah, Nevada, and its real history needs no help. The Mizpah Saloon opened in 1907 and was the first permanent structure in the town. The hotel took its name from the Mizpah Mine and became the social hub of Tonopah. It was financed by George Wingfield, George S. Nixon, Cal Brougher and Bob Govan and designed by George E. Holesworth of Reno, though other sources credit Morrill J. Curtis. Brougher was involved with the Belmont, Tonopah, Midway and Tonopah Mining Company and the Tonopah Divide Mining Company, owned the Tonopah Banking Corporation, which kept an office in the lobby, and sat as a director of the Bank of Italy in San Francisco.
At five storeys the Mizpah and the neighbouring Belvada Building shared the title of tallest building in Nevada until 1927. It was built in reinforced concrete, faced with stone at the front and brick at the sides and rear, with cast iron columns in the windows and the fire escapes. The three-storey Brougher-Govan Block next door served as the first Mizpah and is still joined to it by a wooden stairway crowned with a skylight. It had steam heat, and the first elevator in Tonopah.
Then the legends. The famous one is the Lady in Red, said by guests to be the ghost of a woman murdered on the fifth floor, in one version by a jealous ex-boyfriend and in another by a husband who came back early after missing a train. Ghost Adventures filmed her in its fifth season, and USA Today readers voted the Mizpah the best haunted hotel in the United States in 2018, and seventh on the same list in 2022.
Frank Scott of Las Vegas, who also built the Union Plaza, bought the place in 1979 and spent two and a half years fitting modern conveniences without stripping out the old romance. You can book the Lady in Red Suite.
Other places on the map within a couple of hours.
