Hotel · Murphys, California · Built 1855–1856; rebuilt 1859–1860
Murphys Historic Hotel
Listed on the National Register as Murphys Hotel
A two-story stone Gold Rush hotel with iron doors and shutters on the main street of Murphys, opened in 1856 for stage travelers bound for the Calaveras Big Trees and rebuilt in stone after the town fire of 1859.
History
Murphys grew up after 1848 around the diggings of the Murphy brothers, and by the mid-1850s it was also the jumping-off point for the Calaveras Big Trees, the giant sequoia grove whose discovery in 1852 drew sightseers from around the world. James L. Sperry and John Perry built a hotel for the stage traffic in 1855–56 and opened the Sperry and Perry Hotel on August 20, 1856. Its stone front section with iron doors was supposed to be fireproof, but the wooden dining room behind it was not, and the hotel burned in the fire of 1859 that took most of the town. Rebuilding began at once, this time with all walls of stone, and the hotel reopened the next spring. Its stone and iron saved it in the fire of 1874 and an 1893 explosion and fire that only warped its shutters.
Guests passing through the southern mines to the Big Trees signed the register; the nomination lists Mark Twain, Horatio Alger, Henry Ward Beecher and John Bidwell in 1877, John Jacob Astor in 1878, Ulysses S. Grant, Thomas Lipton, and C. E. Bolton, better known as the stage robber Black Bart. Sperry sold in 1881, and after brief owners G. P. Mitchler bought it in 1882 and it became the Mitchler Hotel. After a closed period the McKimins family reopened it, renaming it the Murphys Hotel in 1945, and in 1963 it was bought by thirty-five members of a club of former College of the Pacific students. It was listed on the National Register in 1971.
“Front part of building was of stone and iron doors separated this part from the wooden dining room in the rear.”
Architecture
The hotel is a two-story building of stone and rubble on a rock foundation, roughly 50 by 95 feet, with wooden floors and a metal roof. Iron doors close the front, and every window on both floors has iron shutters, the standard Gold Rush defense against the fires that swept frame mining towns. A wooden balcony and porch run along the street front over the sidewalk. Inside, the nomination notes that the rooms kept much of the old furniture, brought out of storage after the 1960s, and the long bar room off the lobby remained the town's gathering place. Little else about its plan is recorded in the brief 1971 form.
What to look for
- Iron shutters on every window
- Iron front doors
- Stone walls of the 1859–60 rebuilding
- Balcony over the Main Street sidewalk
- Copies of the old guest register
Setting
The hotel faces Main Street in Murphys, a small Gold Rush town in the Sierra foothills of Calaveras County, its tree-shaded street lined with other stone and frame buildings of the 1850s and 1860s. Calaveras Big Trees State Park lies about fifteen miles up State Route 4, and the caves and vineyards of the area are close by.
Timeline
- 1856Sperry and Perry Hotel opens on August 20
- 1859Hotel burns in the town fire
- 1860Rebuilt in stone and reopened in spring
- 1882Bought by G. P. Mitchler; becomes the Mitchler Hotel
- 1945Renamed the Murphys Hotel
- 1963Bought by members of the Ale and Quail Club
- 1971Listed on the National Register on November 23
Where sources differ
- The famous names in the old register come from copies cited by the nomination and Wikipedia; some, such as Mark Twain's, are widely repeated but hard to verify.
- The nomination's description is very brief; details such as the street balcony and bar are general knowledge of the building rather than documented in the form.
- Reports that the hotel is haunted are local lore.
