Hoover Dam’s ‘Homicide Hotel’ Celebrates Anniversary

On Friday, the Boulder Dam Hotel far-famed its 90th day of remembrance with a blowout during which attendees wore garb celebrating the historical landmark’s 1930s heyday. The two-story Colonial-style lodging domiciliate — which since 2005 has also housed a museum — is placed inwards Boulder City, 30 miles sou'west of the Las Vegas Strip past the Herbert Clark Hoover Dam.

The storied account of the Boulder Dam Hotel includes hosting heads of land and celebrities, and ace of the to the highest degree long-suffering alleged remove mysteries in Nevada history.

Celebrity Hang

The to the highest degree refined construction inward Boulder City when it opened inwards 1933 — 2 years before the John Edgar Hoover Dam was completed — the Boulder Dam Hotel began life as a playground for celebrities.

Bette Stuart Davis stayed here inwards 1934, after filming Of Human Bondage nearby. The next year’s invitee registry included Will Rogers, patch he performed at the Boulder Theatre, as good as a honeymooning Mr. and Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt IV. In 1938, Shirley Temple stayed overnight piece impulsive from L.A. to New York with her parents. And, inwards 1943, Howard Langston Hughes recuperated at the hotel from a 1943 carpenter's plane crash at nearby Lake Mead.

In 1945, however, the Boulder Dam Hotel became associated with a darker story that it’s ne'er been capable to shake.

When Raymond Spilsbury, the hotel’s owner, drowned inwards the nearby Centennial State River, a coroner’s inquest ruled it a suicide. But historians have got a severe problem with this finding.

According to Dennis McBride’s 1993 book, Midnight on AZ Street: The Secret Life of the Boulder Dam Hotel, Spilsbury’s widow, Vona, told the author: “Foul swordplay was uppermost in our minds.”

And she has a substantial case.

Tangled Webb

Paul Webb, a declarer known for edifice lavish Beverly Hills homes in the 1920s, had sought-after(a) to come the same inward Boulder City, starting with the Boulder Dam Hotel. But he lacked the finances. So he approached Spilsbury, with whom he worked for the Cerro de Pasco Copper Corporation during World War I.

They agreed to make a hotel corporation with another co-worker from the Cu mines, Austin Clark.

In 1943, the personal effects of living and working heights inward the Peruvian Andes for terzetto decades had taken its toll on Spilsbury. He suffered a small-scale stroking and highly-developed angina and leg pain.

The followers year, he moved to his Boulder City hotel, with Vona and their son, to retire. Spilsbury had intended to facilitate his brother, Chauncey, who managed the property, revitalize it during his recovery.

Fishy Story

On Jan. 19, 1945, Spilsbury, 56, swarm out to Emery’s Landing, a small fishing resort on Lake Margaret Mead about 20 miles south of Boulder City. His supposed intention was to turn sportfishing with Murl Emery, according to the entrepreneur who founded the sportfishing resort hotel with money he made by ferrying Herbert Clark Hoover Dam workers to  the building site.

But Spilsbury didn’t come at Emery’s resort until 1:30 or 2 p.m., outstandingly later(a) for a fishing trip.

At 3 a.m. the next day, according to Emery, he noticed Spilsbury’s dingy Pontiac parked in his parking lot and began searching for him. His wife discovered Spilsbury’s chapeau and surface past the river’s bank, placed underneath a careen to dungeon them from blowing away.

The table of contents of the coat’s pockets included a notecase containing a $12,352.40 chequer made out to Spilsbury, along with $1,100 in traveler’s checks and $53 in cash.

If maculate run was involved, as Vona Spilsbury suspected, robbery wasn’t the motive.

As searchers combed the area, Vona allegedly told McBride, Emery “tried to blackmail me into a sum of money of money if he found Ray’s body.” If true, this suggests that may have already known its location.

Five weeks later, on Feb. 26, deuce-ace fishermen from L.A. spotted a human build up protruding come out of some bushes growing out from the side of the river, most viii miles downriver from Emery’s Landing.

When Spilsbury’s organic structure was pulled from the river — by sheriff’s officers and Emery — who had rushed to the situation — its ankles were fastened unitedly with Spilsbury’s have belted ammunition and its pockets were filled with heavily stones.

Not Everybody Loved Raymond

On March 1, an inquest was held inward Boulder City, at which several of Spilsbury’s friends testified to a three-member coroner’s jury. According to Dick Webb, Saul of Tarsus Webb’s brother, Spilsbury “didn’t seem depressed.”

Despite this and the suspicious mode inward which Spilsbury’s dead body was found, the jury found that Spilsbury had “come to his death past his possess hand” and the showcase was closed.

In 1936, Sidney Webb had partnered — on the face of it without Spilsbury’s knowledge — with a local tourism business organisation called Grand Canyon-Boulder Dam Tours (GCBDT). Sidney James Webb and its owner, Glover Ruckstell, signed a 20-year understanding with the National Mungo Park Service to build, own, and run all tourism businesses in Lake Mead.

That company also ended up owning the Boulder Dam Hotel and Emery’s yachting operation.

GCBDT went belly out upwardly inward 1942, when Lake Margaret Mead didn’t prove to be the recreational gold mine its investors hoped it would live past then. All of its investors, including Emery, suffered Brobdingnagian losses. When First Baron Passfield and Spilsbury dissolved their partnership, Spilsbury was presumption absolute majority ownership of the Boulder Dam Hotel.

And here’s where the story takes a turn for the absurd…

The 3 members of that coroner’s panel included Murl Emery, the piece who lost a luck investing with Spilsbury, the man whom Spilsbury supposedly intended to go game fishing with after 2 p.m., and the piece who seemed to experience where to bump Spilsbury dead body before it was discovered.

Emery — who died in Mar 1981 at his rest home inwards Boulder City — was ne'er supercharged with a criminal offense involving Spilsbury’s last because, to this day, Sagebrush State authorities don’t look at his demise to get resulted from a crime.