Room 316
The Delaware Hotel, LeadvilleDoc Holliday's Room
Third floor, front of the house. A four poster bed, tall windows over Harrison Avenue, and a story the desk has been telling for a very long time.
The legend
A gambler picks a room the way he picks a chair
Back to the wall, eyes on the door. Everyone who has read anything about John Henry Holliday knows that much about him. What the desk at the Delaware has passed down, clerk to clerk for the better part of a century, is what that habit looks like when the gambler is choosing a hotel room.
He wanted the third floor, and the room at the front with the windows on Harrison Avenue, so he could watch who was walking up from the saloons before they ever reached the lobby. He wanted the room a few steps from the back stairs, so there was a way out of the building that did not pass the front desk. And he wanted the window that opened onto the low roof of the firehouse next door, which is a thing you only care about if you have ever needed to leave a building in a hurry.
That room is 316. It still has all three.
"He liked to see them coming."What the old clerks said, when they were asked why Doc wanted the front
The history
What the record actually says
Doc Holliday stepped off the train in Leadville on July 17, 1882, a year after the gunfight in Tombstone, with his lungs already failing and a warrant behind him in Arizona. He dealt faro on Harrison Avenue, first at the Monarch and then wherever the game was, and lived in small rented rooms up and down the street. Leadville sits at 10,152 feet, which is a hard place to be sick, and he was sick the whole time he was here. By 1884 he weighed 122 pounds.
On August 19, 1884, in Hyman's saloon at 316 Harrison Avenue, he shot a bartender named Billy Allen over a five dollar debt and, in his own words, over "the old trouble." Allen lived. Doc was tried for assault with intent to kill and a Leadville jury acquitted him the following March. It was the last time he ever fired a gun at a man. The desk will tell you it happened just across the street; the newspapers put it at Hyman's, a few blocks down, at number 316, which is either a coincidence or the reason the room got its number in the story. He left for Denver, then for Glenwood Springs and the hot springs he hoped would help. They did not. He died there on November 8, 1887, at thirty six.
The Delaware opened in 1886, in the last stretch of his life, when he was moving between Denver, Leadville and the springs, and the hotel's early guest registers are not in the building anymore. They went with a former owner, and the pages that would settle the question have never been published. So the story lives where it has always lived: at the desk, told by whoever is on shift, and pointed at the same door on the third floor.
Why 316
Three things the room still has
Harrison Avenue, in full view
Tall windows at the front of the house, looking down the avenue toward the saloons Doc worked. Anyone walking up from town is in view for blocks before they reach the door.
A way down that skips the lobby
The back stairs are a few steps from the door of 316. You can be on the street without ever crossing the front desk, which is the point of a back stair if you are a gambler with enemies.
The firehouse next door
The side window opens over the low roof of the old firehouse, close enough to step onto. Every hotel has a fire escape. The legend says this one was chosen for a different kind of emergency.
Doc in Leadville
Five years on Harrison Avenue
Sleep in it
Sleep where Doc slept. Ask for 316 by number.
It books as one of our King rooms, at the King rate, with the four poster bed, the tall windows and the private bath. Call or book online and ask for it by number, and we will hold it for you if it is open.