Copper miners’ hotel-turned-mansion in America could be yours for US$6.2 million
Former 40-bedroom Little Daisy Hotel built by mine owner for workers in Arizona, which Lisa and Walter Acker called home for 20 years, is now for sale
By 1919, when James “Rawhide Jimmy” Douglas built a hotel directly outside the entrance to his copper mine in Arizona, he was already rich.
His company, United Verde Extension Company had gone from 15 cents per share in 1912 to US$35 per share by 1916 – more than US$800 in today’s US dollars – and Douglas, the scion of a wealthy mining family, was feeling so flush that he decided to build his miners a dormitory-cum-hotel at the entrance of the Little Daisy Mine in Jerome, Arizona.
The hotel, appropriately named the Little Daisy Hotel, had 40 rooms, a grand dining room and reception area, and views of the surrounding landscape.
“Supposedly the miners felt like it was too fancy for them,” Lisa Acker, the building’s current owner, says. “But when they were here, they’d hot-bunk [alternately use the same bed] doing eight-hour shifts.”
She says that originally the hotel had “gang showers” and bathrooms, except for in the more luxurious rooms, reserved for Douglas’ guests.
However, by the mid-1950s the mining economy in Jerome had collapsed and the hotel fell into disrepair, along with the rest of the area.
After the hotel fell into disrepair] they sold all the windows and doors, even the tile roof. Everything was sold for salvage, and people just walked off with whatever they didn’t strip.
“They sold all the windows and doors, even the tile roof,” Acker says.
“Everything was sold for salvage, and people just walked off with whatever they didn’t strip.”