Beaumont Hotel

The Beaumont Hotel is the most prominent building on Main Street, an Italianate brick structure from 1886 that served as the social center of Ouray during the silver boom years. The hotel was built with considerable ambition — a three-story atrium lobby, pressed-tin ceilings, elaborate woodwork — and the 2003 restoration preserved these features while updating the services.

The hotel is open to non-guests for meals in its restaurant, which occupies the original ground-floor dining room. The lobby is worth a look for the carved bar and original fixtures. The building's exterior, with its decorative iron cornices and Victorian commercial styling, is the visual anchor of the Main Street streetscape, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Ouray Historic District.

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A story
The Beaumont opened in 1886 at the height of the San Juan silver boom, when Ouray was one of the wealthiest towns per capita in the United States. Its guest register included Theodore Roosevelt, who came to hunt, and Nikola Tesla, who came to assess the electrical potential of the local mines. The hotel fell on hard times in the mid-20th century and operated at various points as apartments and a storage facility before a major restoration in 2003 returned it to its Victorian appearance.