How An Average Nineteenth-Century Man from France Built One of the Most Renown Hotels in America

By Donna Wichelman

Rated among the fifteen most favorite local art businesses in the United States of America, the nineteenth-century Hotel De Paris in Georgetown, Colorado, has always maintained a first-class reputation. Though it has been owned and operated as a museum by the National Society of The Colonial Dames of America since 1954, the Hotel De Paris remains one of the best-preserved nineteenth-century hotels in the United States.

Hotel De Paris, Georgetown Colorado: Donna's Gallery, December 2019

But how did the hotel rise from the site of the Delmonico Bakery in October 1875 to become a first-class hotel and restaurant in this gold and silver mining town of 1879? To understand the origins of the Hotel de Paris, we must develop a picture of the man known to Georgetown residents as Louis Dupuy, who conceived it.

Born Adolphe Francois Gerard in October 1844 in Alencon, France, Adolphe came from parents of average means who operated an inn. After his father's death, his mother encouraged Adolphe to enter a Catholic seminary at age fifteen. However, the priesthood didn't suit him, and by age twenty, he left the seminary at Sées and headed to Paris.

Louis Dupuy (a.k.a. Adolphe Francois Gerard: Photo on the Wall of the Hotel De Paris, Georgetown, Colorado: Donna's Gallery October 2018

In Paris, Adolphe served as an apprentice chef at a large hotel and learned how to prepare fine French cuisine. However, seeking to improve his English fluency, he left France for London, England, where he worked at a newspaper, translating reviews.

But as a free spirit will be, Adolphe moved on to New York City in 1866 and worked for another newspaper. However, caught selling an article he didn't write, Adolphe enlisted in the Army in disgrace, and in August 1868 was assigned to the cavalry at Fort Russell (now Warren Air Force Base) near Cheyenne, Wyoming. By now, we can anticipate Adolphe's pattern of moving on and deserting, and indeed, he went AWOL from the cavalry on April 1, 1869, finding his way to Denver, where he called himself Louis Dupuy to hide from the government.

Yet Louis's (a.k.a. Adolphe) passion for research and writing hadn't waned, and he wrote an in-depth article about a political controversy in France that caught the attention of W.N. Byers of the Rocky Mountain Newspaper. Byers liked Louis so well that he assigned him to report on the new mining districts across Colorado. For more than a year, Louis rode a mule throughout the region until he came to Georgetown, a city of five thousand people.

Unlike the other mining towns Louis had visited, Georgetown was a bustling metropolis of homes and businesses with an international flair. This appealed to him, and he took a job as a miner at a mine near Silver Plume. But on March 6, 1873, a delayed reaction of dynamite caused an explosion in the mine. Louis saved his partner by pushing him away, taking the brunt of the explosion.

News of what Louis had done spread throughout the community, and people treated him as a hero. It was during his convalescence that Louis finally found his mission in life. "In this land of gold and silver, we should live like princes. We should have a great hostelry and the best of wines. While we cannot have the masterpieces of Michelangelo and Cellini, we can at least have the reproductions. I would have a library, and the thoughts of the best authors of the Old World would be upon its shelves."

Therefore, when an advertisement appeared in the Colorado Miner soliciting help from his fellow citizens to pay the rent on the building that housed the former Delmonico Bakery, everyone gathered around to support Louis's proposal for a first-class hotel.

Luxury Hotel Room, Hotel De Paris, Georgetown Colorado: Donna's Gallery October 2018

State of the Art Kitchen, Hotel De Paris, Georgetown, Colorado: Donna's Gallery October 2018

Hotel De Paris, Georgetown, Colorado Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Collection

Thus began a project that took shape in stages over the next four years in which Louis added onto the original building, initially doing all the work himself, remodeling and improving and paving the way for one of the finest hotels and restaurants in the region, evoking a picture of the inns one might find in Louis' home in Normandy, France. Indeed, he had been known to say, "Show them this little souvenir of Alencon which I built in America, and they will understand.


Louis's dream was realized over the years until his death from pneumonia on October 13, 1900. He built his library with books by the best authors from around the world on his shelves. He also continued to invest in the hotel, providing state-of-the-art rooms with all the accoutrements and serving the restaurant's patrons from a state-of-the-art kitchen, offering the finest French and Western wines and cuisine available in the New World, and the most elegant crystal and china one could buy.

Library at Hotel De Paris, Georgetown, Colorado: Donna's Gallery October 2018

After Louis died, the hotel passed to Sophie Gally, who died only four months after Dupuy. It went to her nieces, and then was first rented, then sold, to the Burkholder family, who ran the hotel until 1949 when it closed. The hotel fell into disrepair until the National Society of The Colonial Dames of America in the State of Colorado bought the hotel and restored it to the excellently kept museum it is today. The Hotel De Paris is a site of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. It contains ninety percent of its original furnishings.

Dining Room Hutch with Fine Crystal, Hotel De Paris, Georgetown, Colorado: Donna's Gallery 2018

Donna is an Angel-award-winning author of Historical fiction for A Song of Deliverance. Book Two in the Silver Singing Mine series, Rhythms of the Heart, was released in November 2025. Weaving history and faith into stories of intrigue and redemption grew out of Donna's love of travel, history, and literature as a young adult while attending an international college in Wales, U.K. She enjoys developing plots that show how God's love abounds even in the profoundly difficult circumstances of our lives. Her stories reflect the hunger in all of us for love, belonging, and forgiveness.

Donna was a communications professional before becoming a full-time writer. Her short stories and articles have appeared in inspirational publications. She has two indie-published romantic suspense novels, Light Out of Darkness and Undaunted Valor, in her Waldensian Series. 

Donna and her husband of forty-one years participate in ministry at their local church in Colorado. They love spending time with their grandchildren and bike, kayak, and travel whenever possible.

How Immigrants Birthed and Influenced Colorado's Mining Industry in the Gilded Age

By Donna Wichelman 

(Note: For those who have enjoyed the WWII series I began in November 2023, I will return to the series after my Gilded Age historical romance is released in December 2024 by Scrivenings Press. In the meantime, I hope you will enjoy the blog series on the Territory of Colorado.)

Looking back on the beginnings of the United States of America, one might say we've always been a nation of immigrants. Before the fifteenth – sixteenth centuries, when the Spanish and French arrived on North American soil and established settlements, indigenous populations roamed the land for millennia. But once word spread about the vast land of North America with its abundant resources, more and more English and Europeans arrived seeking personal prosperity, escaping oppressive governments, and desiring religious freedoms.

The same values that brought men and women to a new continent drove the Revolutionary War toward the end of the eighteenth century, because men like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson perceived the loss of those principles at the hand of King George III of Great Britain, which had birthed the first thirteen United Colonies. Jefferson wrote a Declaration of Independence on July 4th, 1776, collected fifty-six signatures, and proclaimed those values—life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—to be self-evident, and a new nation was born.

Photo 73687017 | Declaration Independence © Izanbar | Dreamstime.com

Over the following century, immigrants filled with hopes and dreams of a new and better life streamed to the United States of America, where it was rumored the streets were paved with gold. Each new boat that arrived contained people in pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness.

Castle Gardens, Battery Park, New York: First Official American Immigration Station Opened March 1855
19th Century Illustration1357311458.jpg Dreamstime.com

Castle Clinton Museum, aka Castle Gardens, New York

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But while the entire eastern seaboard belonged to the United States, territories across the continent, like Colorado and Louisiana, still belonged to the Spanish and French. It wasn’t until 1846, when the United States went to war with Mexico, that a treaty was finally reached in 1848, giving the Territory of Colorado to the United States.

Most Easterners still avoided the Rocky Mountains, deterred by the rough terrain. Trappers and others who were brave enough to move west took advantage of the system of trade set up by the Spanish with the Native American tribes of Utes, Arapahos, and Cheyenne and established trading posts, allowing for easier travel west.

But then a different report regarding gold arose, only this time it was of the shiny metal kind found along the rivers and streams on the plains and in the mountains.

In 1850, a party of Georgians, heading west during the California gold rush, found a meager supply of gold on Ralston Creek near present-day Golden, Colorado. But it wasn't until 1858, when William Green Russell organized an expedition and camped along the confluence of the Cherry Creek and South Platte Rivers (now the heart of downtown Denver), that they found profitable deposits. Russell's men established a small settlement named Auraria that later became Denver.

One troy ounce California placer gold nugget - Natural gold specimen

Photo 40791481 © Fireflyphoto | Dreamstime.com

                                   

George Jackson, a member of Russell's party, reasoned that gold on the plains flowed down from the mountains. He ventured into the Clear Creek gorge where the valley opened up at Floyd Hill. Following the path to present-day Idaho Springs, he discovered his first gold on January 7, 1859. Rumor spread, and prospectors flocked to the mountains, where they found significant amounts of placer gold along rivers and creeks. 

Gold discoveries also sparked fierce competition for claims and available resources, and prospectors moved west. 

Two brothers in Russell’s party, George and David Griffith, deterred by the competition, moved up the valley to the confluence of the Main and South Clear Creeks. Having learned by experience in California to look for hard rock veins called lodes on the sides of the valley, they were not disappointed. And though they also found a silver vein, they initially ignored it for the gold.

More prospectors descended on the area, establishing camps that evolved into settlements. The one near the West and Main Forks of Clear Creek became known as George’s Town.

The gold bubble burst in 1864, when the constant need for more investment capital never paid off. Investors, including George Griffith, pulled out.

But in the fall of 1864, three prospectors—Robert Steele, James Huff, and Robert Taylor—discovered an extremely rich silver lode eight miles south of Georgetown on Mount McClellan at 13,200 feet. They headed to Central City to assay their samples, discovering a value of two to five hundred dollars per ton. The silver boom was on.

Silver nuggets isolated on black background close-up

Photo 183584586 © HandmadePictures | Dreamstime.com

By the summer of 1865, Eastern prospectors flocked to the region, and by September 1866, Clear Creek County was declared “indisputably” rich in ores by Central City’s Weekly Miners’ Register. Georgetown flourished. The town built a post office, and William Barton—a Bostonian—started construction on a two-story hotel. New clapboard buildings housing banks and business enterprises sprung up in a growing business district.

Remains of an Old Mine Near Silver Plume, Colorado: Donna's Gallery 2019

The thriving community also needed the infrastructure required, and soon, eastern missionaries created churches, lawyers established law offices, and Georgetown’s first newspaper, the Colorado Miner, ran its first edition in May 1867. On January 28, 1868, the Territory of Colorado legislature declared Georgetown an official town.

Easterners weren’t the only ones investing in the mines. Attempting to raise capital to build smelting plants, mine owners pursued investment from abroad. Robert Orchard Old—a native Englishman who had moved to America—was one man who banked on the silver industry. In 1868, he formed a joint-stock company—the British and Colorado Mining Bureau—with its main offices in London and branches in Colorado. The company shipped ores to England for smelting with the plan to open smelting works in Colorado. His bureau remained prosperous until 1873.

According to historian Christine Bradley in The Rise of the Silver Queen, “The town’s early rustic appearance [in 1872] gave way to fine homes, level sidewalks, a few trees, and elegant fences … The streets of Georgetown were packed with new arrivals from every point of the globe …” including Cornish, Welsh, and German miners, Italian retailers, Irish workmen, and the Frenchman Louis DePuy, who turned a small bakery into the elegant and now historic Hotel de Paris. It was also a town where formerly enslaved people could earn a living and invest in mines. All these elements coincided to create international flare and intrigue as people descended upon Georgetown to make their mark in the mining community.”

Modern View of Hotel De Paris, Georgetown: Donna's Gallery, December 2019

In September's blog, we’ll look at how one immigrant group made its mark on the mining industry of Colorado.

Weaving history and faith into stories of intrigue and redemption grew out of Donna's love of travel, history, and literature as a young adult while attending the United World College of the Atlantic--an international college in Wales, U.K. She enjoys exploring people and cultures of the world and developing plots that show how God's love abounds even in the profoundly difficult circumstances of our lives. Her stories reflect the hunger in all of us for love, belonging, and forgiveness.

Donna received her master's degree in mass communication, journalism from San Jose State University and became a communications professional before writing full-time. Her short stories and articles have appeared in inspirational publications. She has two indie-published romantic suspense novels, Light Out of Darkness and Undaunted Valor, in her Waldensian Series. Her Gilded Age historical romance, A Song of Deliverance, will be released by Scrivenings Press in December 2024.

Donna and her husband of forty years participate in ministry at their local church in Colorado. The love spending time with their grandchildren and bike, kayak, and travel whenever possible.