Hotel de Paris Museum in Georgetown, Colorado

Located up in the Colorado mountains in the historic mining town of Georgetown lies the Hotel de Paris. Opened in 1875 by Louis Dupuy, the Hotel de Paris quickly became known for it’s luxury amenities and gourmet French cuisine during the Colorado gold rush. The hotel is very well preserved and holds over 5,000 items from the late 1800s, many of which are original to when Dupuy owned the hotel.

Louis Dupuy was born as Adolphe François Gerard in France in 1844. After leaving seminary school for culinary school, he immigrated to the US in 1866 where he became a writer for a New York paper. After being caught plagiarizing, he joined the US Army. They moved him out to Cheyenne, Wyoming before he deserted and went to Denver, Colorado. He joined Rocky Mountain News as a mining reporter which lead him to Georgetown. He soon became a miner and worked in nearby Silver Plume where he was hurt in a mining accident. The local community raised enough money to help him change careers and rent a local bakery and two adjacent buildings which he turned into the Hotel de Paris.

The arrival of the railroad in 1877 improved Georgetown’s growth and business. Dupuy made sure the hotel was up to date with the newest and nicest amenities of it’s time. Every room had a sink with both cold and hot water, gas lighting (replaced by electric in 1893), and radiant heating. The hotel held on strong until 1893 when the silver crash hit Georgetown’s mining driven economy, which didn’t recover. Dupuy died in 1900 and left it to his housekeeper and close friend Sophie Gally. She died very quickly after him. In 1903, the Burkholder family purchased the building and made it into a boarding house. They owned it until 1954 when the Colonial Dames of America purchased it from them after years of declining business. It has been a museum ever since. 

The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1970 and later named a site of the National Trust for Historic Preservation in 2007. 

Entering the hotel is truly a step back in time. The original furniture and ornate decorations are floor to ceiling due to the hotel and boarding house closing and immediately becoming a museum.