Chapter 07 - Additions to the Hotel

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All of these neighboring towns were at one time or another contributing something to the prosperity of Elk City, it being their distribution center. But the main factor stimulating the activity and creating the hum was the continuing development of the Buster Mine. The outlying mining operations some distance from town of necessity, had to build bunk house and boarding house facilities for their workers. But the Buster, being only a half mile north of town, furnished none of these, so the men lived in town, mainly in the hotels, and walked to and from work. As activities at the mine quickened, increasingly long lines of men would emerge from the hotels each morning, and string out single file along the trail to the north, carrying work garments and lunch buckets.

The hotels not only packed the lunches for their regular boarders, but also furnished the standard lunch pails. These tin buckets were rectangular in shape, with a capacity of a half gallon or so. The lid took the form, of a small rectangular tank to hold coffee, or such other drink as might be desired. And the lid to the tank was a tin coffee cup. At the peak of operations from 30 to 50 of these lunches would be packed each morning.

The expanded kitchen and dining facilities provided by the new addition to the hotel proved to be quite adequate for the growing business; but the rooms, sleeping quarters, were in woefully short supply. The 8 or 10 added rooms were filled immediately. So, Carpenter, Billy Johnson was again called into consultation. He had planned the whole structure quite wide, with two rows of bedrooms and a six foot hallway in between. And the roof was pitched rather steeply to help shed the winter snows. These two features created a very spacious but dark cavern of an attic, with but two windows, one in each end. A substantial stairway leading to the attic was already in place. While Johnson and helpers laid a rough lumber floor in the attic, an order was dispatched to the outside for wagon loads of iron bedsteads, springs and matresses, and bolts of heavy unbleached muslin. In a matter of weeks the attic was divided into a hallway and some 18 or 20 "rooms". with wood strip and muslin partitions. If there was little privacy in these rooms, there was less in the way of furnishings. A row of nails in a wooden cross member was the ward robe, a curtain of loose muslin was the door, and, aside from, the bed, the room contained only a wooden bench as a stand for a candle stick. But the men were glad to have even such crude accommodations. It was better than sleeping in the hay lofts of the livery stable on those cold nights. Besides, the attic project was intended to cover only the immediate emergency. The two Cheseboro lots to the west would be available on which to add another annex when time permitted. So far as the people of Elk City were concerned, the operation and the production of gold at the Duster Mine might go on indefinitely. After all, the management was spending thousands of dollars, cross-cutting, sinking, drifting, stoping, blocking out ore and building a mill. And regardless of the Buster, weren't there dozens of other equally promising prospects throughout the district? So within a year or so, the final hotel annex was started. It was a two story addition covering the two Cheseboro lots, but not extending as far back as the original building. It provided nine new rooms on the second floor, and eight a baggage room and a parlor on the ground floor.

The original unit of the Hotel was inadequate, so tow annexes were added within a short time. Note cat - walk and water barrel on roof, - the only kind of fire protection available.

The Hotel lobby was papered, wainscoated and decorated with mounted heads from the Salmon River Country.

It may be interesting to mention the appurtenant out buildings which went to make a mining town hotel establishment complete. Of prior necessity was a wood - shed large enough to protect several cords of wood, with room for saw horse and chopping block. There were five or six stoves which had an insatiable appetite for pine wood. To the rear of the wood shed was an ice house. Each winter, when the ice on the beaver dams of Elk Creek became thick enough to support a man, some one was dispatched to the creek to shovel off the new snow over the ponds and keep it clear. This permitted the ice to freeze to greater depth. When it was 12 or 15 inches thick, it was sawed with an ice saw into blocks weighing from 50 to 75 pounds, and transported on sleds to the ice house. Here it was piled up in a solid stack five or six feet high in the center of the shed and covered with sawdust two feet or more thick on all sides and on top. Thus, a supply of ice was there for the digging through the summer months. Next to this structure to the west was a small hen house surrounded by a picket fence, where a non-descript flock of 30 or 40 chickens were sort of self perpetuating. They were supplied with table scraps and wheat, and in turn, supplied the kitchen with a portion of the egg requirements. To the rear and on either side of these two structures were two double sized privies,- there being no inside plumbing in those days. The largest out building was a large enough to store the winter hay, and to stable two cows and the Strongs' two horses. The cows, during part of the year, furnished all the milk and cream requirements of the hotel. The horses were always available for transportation. Prior mention has been made of the hog enclosure located to the rear of all these appurtenant housings.

And who took care of this heterogeneous collection of side activities? The hotel flunkee, or roustabout. He was a practitioner if not a master of all trades. He sawed and split the wood and distributed it to the wood boxes at the various stoves. He cleaned the barn; he milked the cows; he fed the pigs, the chickens, the horses and the cows. He iced the refrigerator. He swept the lobby and shoveled snow. And he was repair and odd job man to boot.