By 1919, when James “Rawhide Jimmy” Douglas built a hotel directly outside the entrance to his copper mine in Arizona, he was already rich.

His company, United Verde Extension Company (UVX) had gone from 15 cents a share in 1912 to $35 a share by 1916 (over $800 in today’s dollars), and Douglas, the scion of a wealthy mining family, was feeling so flush that he decided to build his miners a dorm-cum-hotel at the entrance of the Little Daisy Mine in Jerome, Arizona.

The hotel, appropriately named the Little Daisy Hotel, had 40 rooms, a grand dining room and reception area, and views of the surrounding landscape. “Supposedly the miners felt like it was too fancy for them,” says Lisa Acker, the building’s current owner. “But when they were here, they’d hot-bunk [i.e. share a bed] doing eight hour shifts.”

Originally, she adds, the hotel had “gang showers” and bathrooms, except for in the swankier rooms, reserved for Douglas’s guests.

By the mid 1950s though, the mining economy in Jerome had collapsed, and the hotel fell into disrepair along with the rest of the area.

“They sold all the windows and doors, even the tile roof,” says Acker. “Everything was sold for salvage, and people just walked off with whatever they didn’t strip.”

The building’s concrete husk was sold to William Earl Bell (who helped develop the atomic clock) in 1969, as part of a larger land deal involving more valuable, adjacent property. It wasn’t until 1995, when Acker and her husband Walter purchased the property, and decided to turn it into a private home.

The couple had spent the previous decade developing 20 acres of land in Montana; after they sold that property, they were ready for a change.

“We found this place, and Walter was like, would you want to buy it,” Acker recalls. “I was like, um, it’s a pretty big place, let’s go back and visit it again to make sure.”

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