The Haunted Delaware Hotel, Leadville: Mary Coffey and a Silver Boom Hotel at 10,152 Feet

The Delaware Hotel fills a tall red brick block on the corner of Harrison Avenue and East Seventh Street, in the middle of Leadville’s historic main street. Built at the height of the silver boom, it has shops at street level and 36 guest rooms on the two floors above, with a lobby bar of chandeliers and chesterfields. At 10,152 feet, it is the highest stop on our list of haunted hotels in Colorado.

Its ghost is Mary Coffey, shot by her husband in 1899. Leadville author Roger Pretti, who wrote a book on the town’s ghosts, counts the Delaware among its most active buildings, and local guides say Mary still keeps watch over the hotel. The details of her story have shifted over the years, and we set out below what is known and what is not.

The ghosts of The Delaware Hotel

Mary Coffey

The story most often told is that Mary Coffey and her husband were renting a room at the Delaware in 1899 when he, in a jealous rage, shot her in the back. She is said to have clung to life for several days before she died. She is buried in Leadville’s Evergreen Cemetery.

Since then guests and staff have described a woman in the upstairs corridors, footsteps when the halls are empty and a sense of being watched. Leadville’s tourism office describes her as keeping watch over the hotel, and Roger Pretti includes the Delaware in his book on the town’s ghosts, Lost Between Heaven and Leadville.

What the records say

Mary Coffey’s story is harder to pin down than the retelling suggests. Accounts give the year as anywhere from 1889 to 1899, and they disagree on whether she was shot inside the hotel or just outside it. We have not found a contemporary newspaper report that settles it. That does not make the haunting less interesting, but it is worth knowing that the version you hear on a ghost walk is the polished one.

Room 16 and the famous guests

Leadville legend puts Doc Holliday in Room 16, with its window over Harrison Avenue, in late 1886 and early 1887, when he was living in Leadville. Molly Brown, Harry Houdini, John Philip Sousa and Butch Cassidy are also claimed as guests. None of these visits has been confirmed in primary records, so enjoy them as stories rather than history. There is no ghost attached to Room 16, but it is the room people ask about.

The most haunted rooms and places to look

• The upstairs corridors: Where Mary Coffey is most often reported.
• Room 16: The room legend links to Doc Holliday, over Harrison Avenue.
• The lobby bar: Once the dry goods store; a good place to ask staff for their own stories.

History of The Delaware Hotel

Leadville exploded in the late 1870s on silver, and by the 1880s it was one of the richest towns in the country. Brothers William, George and John Callaway built the Delaware Block for somewhere between $60,000 and $80,000, and it opened in October 1886 with John Callaway as proprietor. The ground floor was leased to R. H. Beggs and Co. Dry Goods, later the Crews Beggs Trading Company, and a store would trade there for almost ninety years. The two upper floors held around fifty rooms, a mix of hotel rooms, monthly offices and long-term lodgings.

The Callaway family sold the building in 1946 for $40,000. In 1980 a Denver company turned the ground floor into a small mall, and by the mid-1980s Goldman and Charlotte Greenfield were remodeling the run-down building. It reopened as a hotel in 1986, its centenary year, and a long rehabilitation through 1993 won Delaware Block, Inc. a Stephen H. Hart Award from Colorado’s preservation community.

Kit and Gail Williams bought the hotel in 2000 and furnished the rooms with period pieces. New owners took over in 2021 and began a phased renovation, rebuilding the lobby as a bar and lounge and adding the building’s first elevator. In March 2026 the Delaware was listed for sale as a 36-room hotel, and it continued to take bookings.

Tips for a haunted stay

• Leadville is over 10,000 feet up. Drink water, avoid heavy drinking on the first night and take the stairs slowly.
• Ask for a room on the upper floor if you want Mary’s corridors, or Room 16 for the Holliday legend.
• Join a Leadville by Lamplight walking tour for more of the town’s ghost stories.
• Visit Evergreen Cemetery, where Mary Coffey is buried, in daylight.
• Book soon and confirm directly, since the hotel has been listed for sale.

More haunted hotels nearby

• Hotel Colorado, Glenwood Springs: suite 661 and the Navy hospital
• The Hand Hotel, Fairplay: Grandma Hand’s rocking chair
• Hotel Jerome, Aspen: another silver boom hotel over Independence Pass
• Haunted hotels in Colorado

Sources

Facts on this page are checked against the hotel’s own website, historic records and news coverage. Ghost stories are reported as guests, staff and local historians tell them. Read how we rate haunted hotels.

• The Historic Delaware Hotel
• Leadville Twin Lakes: Ghosts of Leadville
• Best Attractions: Inside the Delaware Hotel (2026)
• LoopNet: Delaware Hotel listing

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