Formerly: Hotel Bullock
Deadwood, South Dakota · Founded 1895 · Building: circa 1895–1896
A Deadwood hotel built by Seth Bullock and Sol Star after the 1894 fire, restored to hotel use in the early 1990s and known for its modern ghost lore.
The Bullock Hotel stands at the corner of Main and Wall Streets in Deadwood, South Dakota, with Bully's Restaurant & Bar on site. Seth Bullock and Solomon Star built the hotel around 1895–1896 after the 1894 fire destroyed their hardware business at the location. The building later operated as a hardware store from 1976 into the early 1990s before being renovated back into a hotel.
Seth Bullock and Solomon Star arrived in Deadwood and began operating a hardware business at the Main and Wall Streets site.
Source: Deadwood History, "Bullock, Seth"; Deadwood.com, "Solomon 'Sol' Star"
A major Deadwood fire destroyed Bullock and Star's hardware store. The partners chose to build a hotel at the site rather than reconstruct the store.
Source: Deadwood.com, "Solomon 'Sol' Star"; Bullock Hotel historical summaries
Bullock and Star built the Bullock Hotel as a three-story luxury hotel with approximately 63 rooms, steam heat, and indoor plumbing. Sources vary between 1895 and 1896 for completion or opening.
Source: Deadwood.com, "Solomon 'Sol' Star"; Clio, "Bullock Hotel"
Seth Bullock died of cancer at his ranch near Belle Fourche, South Dakota. He did not die at the Bullock Hotel or in Room 211.
Source: Everything South Dakota, "Haunted Bullock Hotel in Deadwood"; Bullock Hotel historical summaries
The Bullock Hotel building was converted into a hardware store, ending its prior hotel use.
Source: Clio, "Bullock Hotel"; Bullock Hotel historical summaries
Bullock Properties renovated the building and returned it to hotel use in the early 1990s.
Source: Clio, "Bullock Hotel"; Bullock Hotel historical summaries
An Unsolved Mysteries segment about the Bullock Hotel's ghost stories aired or was filmed in the early 1990s. A fan-maintained index gives December 9, 1992; the exact production metadata requires confirmation from official program archives.
Source: Midwest Haunts, "Bullock Hotel"; Everything South Dakota, "Haunted Bullock Hotel in Deadwood"
The Bullock Hotel continues to operate with accommodations and on-site dining at Bully's.
Source: Historic Bullock Hotel official website
Every claim gets rated. A business's own website can never earn "documented."
Deadwood historical material identifies Bullock and Star as business partners who replaced their fire-destroyed hardware business with the Bullock Hotel around 1895–1896. The precise completion year varies across secondary summaries, so the claim is presented as a construction period rather than a single fixed date.
Seth Bullock died of cancer on September 23, 1919, at his ranch near Belle Fourche, South Dakota. The widely repeated Room 211 story is incorrect and may have helped fuel the later haunting legend.
The building became a hardware store in 1976 and was restored to hotel use only in the early 1990s. It is an active historic hotel today, but it is not an uninterrupted hotel operation from its 1890s construction.
The hotel actively promotes a haunted reputation, and modern reports describe guest and staff experiences such as unexplained smells, footsteps, and sightings. The existence of the legend is documented as contemporary folklore, but the alleged paranormal events cannot be historically or scientifically verified.
Multiple modern accounts say Unsolved Mysteries featured the hotel in an early-1990s segment connected to a psychic named Sandy Bullock. This review did not retrieve official program archives confirming the exact air date, episode number, or segment content, so the production connection is plausible rather than documented.
The hotel is closely associated with Deadwood's frontier history and with Seth Bullock's friendship with Theodore Roosevelt, but this review did not locate hotel registers, dated newspapers, correspondence, photographs, or travel records confirming individual guest stays at the hotel.
That a crew visited and filmed is usually easy to verify. What they claim to have captured is a separate, and usually lower-rated, claim.
Multiple later accounts describe an Unsolved Mysteries segment concerning the Bullock Hotel. This review did not retrieve an official episode database, broadcast record, or production archive confirming the exact date, episode number, interview subjects, or alleged phenomena. The reported existence of a television feature should not be treated as proof of paranormal activity.
Everything below has been reported by two or more independent sources — this is an informational record of what's said about this place, not a verified account of paranormal activity. Still Open America doesn't certify hauntings as real.
Guests and employees report seeing a tall male figure in period or Western clothing in the hallways, restaurant, bar, basement, and near the main stairwell. The figure is commonly identified as Seth Bullock and is portrayed as a watchful but generally nonthreatening presence.
Seth Bullock died at his ranch near Belle Fourche in 1919, not in Room 211 or elsewhere at the Bullock Hotel. The identity of any reported apparition as Bullock cannot be confirmed.
A recurring hotel story says a lost young boy was escorted back to his room by a kind man, then identified the man from a portrait of Seth Bullock. The report is commonly presented as a distinct helpful-ghost encounter tied to Bullock's portrait and hotel-host reputation.
Guests and staff report unexplained cigar smoke, rose, and lilac odors throughout the hotel, particularly cigar smoke in Room 211. The scents are generally attributed to Seth Bullock or other former hotel figures, but no source establishes a specific identity.
Guests and employees have reported hearing a male voice call their names, being tapped on the shoulder by unseen hands, and hearing whistling when no person is visible. The reports occur in guest rooms, hallways, and public areas and are not consistently linked to one named figure.
Reports from the second and third floors include footsteps in empty hallways, shadow figures, alarm clocks sounding when unplugged, televisions or lights operating unexpectedly, and an antique clock chiming despite being nonfunctional. Room 211 is frequently described as a focal point, but reports extend to several rooms.
Staff and guests have reported plates and glasses shaking or flying in Bully's, barstools shifting in the basement dining area, carts moved by themselves, and showers, appliances, lights, or other objects activating without an apparent person. These reports form a broader recurring object-movement legend across the restaurant, bar, cellar, and rooms.
A young girl called Sarah and a female figure described as her mother are reportedly seen in the basement and cellar area. The story says they died during an epidemic after the space was used as a makeshift hospital, but the historical identities and deaths have not been confirmed.
No historical source reviewed confirmed a girl named Sarah, her mother's identity, or their alleged deaths at the hotel during an epidemic.
Guests and paranormal investigators report unusual photographic anomalies, including a white cloudy figure over a bed in Room 211 and figures that appear in photographs taken in the hotel. The images are part of the reported haunting folklore and do not establish a paranormal cause.
Seth Bullock died in Room 211 at the Bullock Hotel.
Seth Bullock died of cancer at his ranch near Belle Fourche, South Dakota, on September 23, 1919. He did not die at the hotel.
Source: Everything South Dakota, "Haunted Bullock Hotel in Deadwood"; Bullock Hotel historical summaries
The 1894 Deadwood fire destroyed an earlier Bullock Hotel.
The fire destroyed the Bullock and Star hardware business at the Main and Wall Streets site. Bullock and Star subsequently built the Bullock Hotel there around 1895–1896.
Source: Deadwood.com, "Solomon 'Sol' Star"
The Bullock Hotel has operated continuously as a hotel since the 1890s.
The building was converted to a hardware store in 1976 and returned to hotel use after early-1990s renovations.
Source: Clio, "Bullock Hotel"; Bullock Hotel historical summaries
The Bullock Hotel survives through reuse rather than uninterrupted hotel operation. Its return to lodging use in the early 1990s, paired with on-site dining, heritage tourism, and Deadwood's broader historic-district economy, brought a prominent Bullock-and-Star building back into the town's visitor economy.
Bullock Hotel in Deadwood, South Dakota, was built by Seth Bullock and Solomon Star around 1895–1896 after the 1894 fire destroyed their hardware business at Main and Wall Streets. The property later stopped operating as a hotel when it became a hardware store in 1976, then returned to hotel use after an early-1990s renovation. Bully's Restaurant & Bar is the hotel’s present on-site dining venue.
The Bullock Hotel is an important historic Deadwood hotel, but this review does not establish it as South Dakota's oldest operating hotel. The building was used as a hardware store from 1976 into the early 1990s, so it cannot be described as continuously operating as a hotel from its 1890s opening.
No. Seth Bullock died of cancer on September 23, 1919, at his ranch near Belle Fourche, South Dakota. He did not die at the Bullock Hotel or in Room 211, despite a story often repeated in connection with the hotel’s ghost lore.
A documented public-media reference appears in early-1990s accounts of an Unsolved Mysteries segment about the Bullock Hotel's ghost stories; a fan-maintained program index dates it to December 9, 1992. This review did not identify a reliable earlier newspaper, hotel record, or oral-history transcript, so it cannot establish that the 1992 reference was the first public report of the hotel being haunted.
633 Main St, Deadwood, SD 57732
(605) 578-1745
The Bullock Hotel operates in downtown Deadwood with accommodations and Bully's on-site dining; confirm current dining, lodging, ghost-tour, and casino information directly before visiting.