Glenwood Springs
Hotel Colorado
Silver baron Walter Devereux's 1893 hotel across from the Glenwood Hot Springs pool, Theodore Roosevelt's base for a 1905 bear hunt.
- Built
- 1893Built 1891-93 as a resort hotel by silver baron Walter Devereux, modeled on Rome's Villa de Medici.
- Style
- Italianate
- Architect
- Edward Tilton (HHA); NRHP credits Boring, Tilton & Melton and William Pflaging
- Type
- Grand hotel
- Credentials
- Listed on the National Register of Historic Places; Historic Hotels of America member
The story
Silver baron Walter Devereux, an early Glenwood Springs settler, began the $850,000 hotel in 1891 and opened it in 1893 with a 25-foot waterfall in the central lounge. Theodore Roosevelt hunted from it in 1901 as vice president and in 1905 used it as his base for a three-week bear hunt, and William Howard Taft visited on September 23, 1909. Several rooms served as speakeasies during Prohibition. From July 1943 to 1946 the U.S. Navy ran it as a convalescent hospital that treated more than 6,500 patients.
The ghost story
Lore names founder Walter Devereux as the hotel's best-known ghost, with witnesses reporting cigar smoke in the halls and lobby long after smoking was banned. Another legend tells of 'Bobbie', said to have been a WWII Navy nurse killed by a jealous officer, whose gardenia perfume guests report near her favorite dining-room table.
Source: www.historichotels.org
Good to know
- Address: 526 Pine St., Glenwood Springs, CO 81601
Sources (3)
Last verified October 2026. Details change; confirm with the inn before you book.