Mizpah Hotel

The Mizpah Hotel, one of the tallest structures in Tonopah, exemplifies the prosperity of the early twentieth-century mining boom and suggests the aspirations of its financiers, George Wingfield, George Nixon, Cal Brougher, and Bob Govan, to bolster faith in the continued success of the region. Many hotels, like rooming houses, provided accommodations for the hundreds or even thousands of new arrivals to mining towns in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. More elegant hotels, however, provided opulent accommodations for businessmen and travelers rather than miners and laborers and thus were expected to be prominent buildings. Construction of the hotel was halted by the Panic of 1907, which hurt Nevada's mining towns as San Francisco's investors shifted their money to more stable investments. The building opened to much fanfare the following year, however, featuring amenities such as an electric elevator. Ironically, it was the last major construction project in Tonopah before the economy went into a tailspin.

The five-story reinforced concrete building has a veneer of stone on the main facade and brick on the side and rear walls. Stone piers mark the street-level facade; windows above are grouped in three pairs on each floor. George Holesworth, a Reno architect and contractor, designed the building, as well as a number of other structures in town and in nearby Goldfield. The Mizpah is still a hotel, now with a casino on the main floor. It also encompasses the three-story building next door, the old granite Brougher-Govan Block, designed by John M. Curtis and constructed in 1905 as a bank. Masons from San Francisco executed the stonework. By 1909 the hotel had taken over two upper floors for additional rooms.