The couple returned to Jerome, and after doing some measurements, getting a few bids from builders, and looking at the plans for the original hotel in the town’s museum, they decided to purchase it.

The building was officially 35,000 square feet on a 3.45 acres, though after going through it, they discovered that the house was about 9,000 square feet per level, and totaled about 27,000 square feet. The purchase price was $190,000, Acker says.

More than two decades later, Acker is now putting it on the market, listing it with Russ Lyon Sotheby’s International Realty for $6.2 million. Acker’s husband passed away unexpectedly last September, she says, and the house’s 12,000 square feet of indoor space, 2,900 square feet of covered porches, the 2,600-square-foot garage/workshop, and 9,000-square-foot rooftop garden feel, she says, a bit excessive for one person.

“People always used to say, ‘Only two people live there?!’ ” Acker says. “Now it’s, ‘Only one person?’ It makes me giggle.”

Living (in) History
The process of turning a concrete husk into a livable mansion took the better part of a decade, and the bulk of the work was performed by Acker and her husband themselves. The couple had only been married for five years when they purchased the property, but their experience in Montana “showed us that we could build something together and stay together,” she says.

Initially, they lived in an airstream trailer parked outside the property as they worked to put a roof on the building. Next, they lived in an enclosed area inside the building as they worked to make the rest of the place habitable.

“A firm in Phoenix did all the exterior windows, which are made out of solid oak,” Acker says. The windows alone took a year and a half to make, during which “we just focused on other things,” she says.

The couple had access to blueprints and historic photos, and did their best to recreate interior moldings and decoration as best they could.

The one major shift was the roof garden, which the couple was inspired to create after realizing that—thanks to disintegrated plaster and concrete—the roof already had a 9-inch thick floor already. As a consequence, they put in a vegetable garden, fire-pit, kitchen, fish pond, hot tub, and croquet lawn (“which you can use as a putting green”) all on the third story, which has predictably stunning views.

Indoors, they reconfigured the second floor so that it comprised eight bedrooms. Three of the bedrooms are en-suite, while the other five are smaller, in the footprint of the original miner’s rooms.