The Fountain Hotel, a luxury playground for the rich visiting the Yellowstone National Park, was built in 1891 as the largest hotel in the park. It was also believed to be haunted by guests that never left.
According to Annie Carlson a research coordinator at Yellowstone, the hotel was a ‘cut above the rest.’ which was located just north of Fountain Paint Pot in the Lower Geyser Basin. The three-story structure cost $100,000 to build and could accommodate 350 guests. It boasted 143 rooms, steam heat and baths that used the hot springs water.
“The hotel was fancy given its rustic surroundings, and guests would wear their finest clothes to regular evening balls,” Carlson said.
Fountain Hotel guests could walk among bubbling mud pots and active geysers while enjoying scenic meadows and mountain views. Another popular attraction in the early years was a bear feeding station just behind the hotel. Kitchen staff would throw food and garbage out for the hungry bears, to the delight of guests who watched nearby. Bear attacks had been reported but were infrequent enough that the practice of feeding the bears continued.
Once automobiles were introduced the park, the hotel was no longer needed along the route through Yellowstone since guests could travel farther into the park and would bypass the hotel. As more guests only stopped for lunch, the Fountain Hotel was abandoned in 1917. It burned to the ground a decade later.
“Rangers and others said it was just as well that the hotel was gone,” author Shelli Larios of “Yellowstone Ghost Stories” said. “Because it was haunted.”
The mysterious disappearance of a millionaire’s heir and an invisible guest ringing the service bell are just two of the stories that surrounded the hotel and led to its demise.
The Missing Guest
Newspapers across the nation reported that on the evening of July 30, 1900, Leroy R. Piper, wearing his ever-present diamond rings, purchased a cigar from a stand in the hotel lobby, stepped outside onto the hotel porch and was never seen again.
The wealthy young banker was the heir to a reported $100,000 from his millionaire uncle, William Piper, who had just passed away in San Franciso, California. Piper was on his way to his uncle’s hometown to settle this estate when he stopped for a few days in Yellowstone National Park.
Piper would have arrived by stagecoach with other guests and most likely wasn’t discovered missing until the next morning. Theories immediately were thrown about as a desperate man hunt took place in the park. The popular beliefs were that he was done in by murder, suffered a scalding death by hot springs or was ravaged by the bears at the feeding station.
Piper’s home paper, the Shelby County Democrat of Ohio, reported that the banker had been in ill health for a few years.
“It is feared that in a moment of temporary aberration of mind he wandered in the park and was either lost or met with an accident,” the Shelby reported.
The cavalry were dispatched to search for the young tourist. For a month, they systematically canvased the area that Piper could have wandered into. No sign was ever found of Piper or his two diamond rings.
His wife even offered a $1,000 award and hired a private detective. When that failed, Larios said that Piper’s brother-in-law traveled to Yellowstone and followed every possible lead to even just find the body.
“For nearly a month he even slept outdoors, hoping he could somehow follow the howls of coyotes and found the remains of his brother-in-law,” Larios said. “He found nothing. In December, Piper was given up for dead.”
Missing Motorists
Piper was not the only guest of the Fountain Hotel to disappear. The Casper-Star Tribune in 1928 said that a popular story told every year until the hotel was torn down in 1927 was about a party of tourists who had disappeared at the hotel.
In 1916, the Fountain Hotel was still a popular place of interest for the motorists. The private automobile had just been allowed into Yellowstone the year before and park travelers mainly visited the hotel for lunch.
The chief attractions that year, according to the 1916 Salt Lake Telegram, was not the hotel itself but the Fountain and Great Fountain geysers, the Mammoth Plant pots, Clepaydra spring and Firehole Lake.
The missing tourists had driven up to the Fountain Hotel to enjoy the day and were never seen again. The guests had mysteriously disappeared and the last that was seen of their vehicle was of two men driving it off.
According to the Casper Star-Tribune, this mystery was also never solved.
The Ghostly Guest
Newell F. Joyner, who worked as a Ranger Naturalist in Yellowstone National Park from 1928-1930, recorded another mysterious occurrence at the Fountain Hotel that sent one employee fleeing the park.
While Piper was never found, another strange guest appeared at the Fountain Hotel. The hotel season was coming to an end in late fall when the hotel’s winter keeper was summoned by the ringing of a service bell that was connected to one of the hotel rooms.
The winter-keeper was puzzled by the ringing of the call bell because the room was empty. Yet, duty called and the keeper checked the room. As expected, there was no one there.
The following day, at precisely the same time, the same service bell rang from the empty hotel room. This time, the entire hotel was empty. The tourist season had come to an end and the winter-keeper was alone.
For days afterwards, the bell continued to ring at exactly the same time each day. The keeper continued to check the room, hoping to catch the intruder in the act. Each time, there was no one in the empty room.
“Finally, the poor winter-keeper could stand it no more,” Larios reported. “He refused to remain in the haunted hotel and fled, vowing never to return.”
A park investigation was made into the winter-keeper’s claim and Joyner’s notes reveal that they came upon a different conclusion than a ghostly guest.
The Yellowstone Park investigators claimed that it was a mouse.
“Every evening at the same time, the mouse would go out to gather food,” the report read. “It would crawl through the bell wire, causing the bell to ring.”
On reflection, a mouse that rings a bell at the same time each evening, may be even more eerie than a ghost!
Whatever haunted the Fountain Hotel has since moved on and all that remains are the natural wonders and the spooky tales of missing and ghostly guests.
Jackie Dorothy can be reached at jackie@cowboystatedaily.com.
