Old Faithful Inn

Public Domain per NPS

History

The current hotel – built 1903 – 1904 – is the 4th hotel to stand on the site.

The Tent Hotel 1883-1885 was pretty much what it sounds like. A set of tents for guests to stay in with minimal comforts but you did get a bed and a large dining tent where – per a review at the time – one waiter served between 70 and 80 guests. Most people went into the kitchen themselves to bargain with the cook in order to be fed.

The Hobart Hotel 1885-1894 was at least a structure; 2 storeys and the ability to house 70 guests. On November 17, 1894, the hotel burned to the ground after a fire started in a defective flue in the ladies’ parlor.

It is unclear if anyone died in the fire. Considering the level of fire safety at the time it quite likely people did but we could find no reports confirming this.

Upper Geyser Basin Hotel (Shack Hotel) 1894-1903 which only provided indoor – albeit very primitive – housing for the dining room and the manager. Guests were housed in large tents which were portioned into “rooms”, but the partitions only went up ¾’s of the way up.

And finally.

The Old Faithful Inn 1904-Present is the huge Queen Anne style building is the final hotel built on the site and the first with heat and electricity. It cost $140,000 ($4.8 million in 2024 dollars) and was constructed with local materials.

The hotel was furnished for another $25,000 (almost $900,000 in 2024 dollars).

Today it is the largest log hotel in the world, and may be the largest log building in the world as well.

Paranormal Activity

It is believed the West Wing was built over unmarked graves.

The most famous ghost in the hotel is that of the headless bride. She is said to be a New York socialite who married below her station and was cut off from her family fortune. Unfortunately, her new older husband quickly spent what little money she had, and she was found in her room’s bath tub without her head.

Her head was later found in the Crow’s Nest above the lobby where the band played. Historically speaking, there was a murder in the Inn in 1915 in Room 127 where a woman was found decapitated in the tub.

Her apparition is now seen, in her wedding dress or at least a long white dress, descending the staircase to the Crow’s Nest. She is usually seen with her head in the crook of her arm.

Her husband, and murderer, also still haunts the hotel. His apparition; dressed in a merchant marine’s uniform. He is often seen looking in the windows of rooms as well as in Room 127 and the Crow’s Nest.

An inspector watched a fire extinguisher turn itself upside down before righting itself all with no interaction with anything visible.

The apparition of a man dressed as one of the frontiersmen who once lived in the west is seen. He is usually seen walking the halls of the West Wing and is thought to be from one of the unmarked graves.

The ghost of LR Piper has been seen attempting to crawl out of a geyser hole. He accidentally fell into the hole while visiting the area.

A young boy – who looks as solid as you or I – will run up to both guests and staff in tears saying he can’t find his parents. The boy then just suddenly disappears.

In Room 2 a woman awoke in the middle of the night to see the apparition of a woman in a Victorian dress floating at the foot of her bed.

Doors and other objects have been reported as moving on their own.