The Claimjumper Hotel

Fire was a constant in a mining town built of wood, and this corner has burned more than once. A hotel rose here after Park City's Great Fire of 1898, run by the well-liked Marie Hethke O'Keefe — and burned again in 1912. The town answered by raising $22,000 by subscription for a fine brick replacement, the New Park Hotel, which O'Keefe opened in 1913 and ran until 1952, as the mines were failing. Fifty-cent dinners, a red-white-and-blue dining room, guest lists printed in the paper. The building still stands on Main Street, now the Claimjumper.

What the plaque says

The Park City Hotel was built on this site after the Great Fire of 1898. It was managed by a well-liked and respected Park City resident, Mrs. Marie Hethke O'Keefe, who also owned the furnishings. After it was destroyed in another fire in 1912, a great community fund-raising effort produced $22,000 to pay for the construction of a fine brick building to be called the New Park Hotel. On November 3, 1913, Mrs. O'Keefe opened the new hotel and it quickly became a favorite stopping place for travelers. It was described as a "beautiful and commodious hostelry with a dining room decorated in patriotic red, white, and blue." All meals, including Sunday dinner, were 50 cents each. Guest lists, which were published in the Park Record, indicated that business was flourishing. Mrs. O'Keefe operated the New Park Hotel until 1952 when depressed economic times forced its closure. She died in 1958. After extensive remodeling and modernization in the mid-1960s, the building reopened as The Claimjumper, a hotel, restaurant, and private club. The hotel rooms were converted into offices after a fire in 1992.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Park City — steps away
  Silver built it. Snow saved it.
• Park City Main Street — steps away
  A historic mining town turned world-class ski and film festival destination
• Park City Mountain — 0.7 mi
  The largest ski resort in the United States, grown straight out of a 19th-century silver town.
• Deer Valley — 1.6 mi
  A ski-only luxury resort above Park City, now in the middle of the largest expansion in U.S. ski history.

More markers nearby

• The Mortuary — steps away
• Elks Lodge — steps away
• Rodney W. Schreurs Centennial Park — steps away
• Masonic Hall — steps away