Cheyenne, Wyoming · Founded 1911 · Building: 1911
A five-story Cheyenne hotel opened in 1911 with private baths and telephones in every room, still operating on Central Avenue.
The Historic Plains Hotel opened in downtown Cheyenne on March 9, 1911, after the Cheyenne Securities Company hired architect William R. Dubois to build the city a modern luxury hotel. The original five-story building had three elevators, 100 furnished rooms, private baths, and telephones in every guest room. It remains a working hotel at 1600 Central Avenue and a major surviving example of early-20th-century Cheyenne ambition.
Cheyenne business leaders, including Industrial Club president Thomas Heaney, began organizing for a major new hotel at the Industrial Club's annual $1 dinner.
Source: Cowboy State Daily, "Historic Plains Hotel In Cheyenne For Sale For $5.85 Million," October 8, 2023; Haunted Rooms, "The Plains Hotel Cheyenne"
The Cheyenne Securities Company formed to build the hotel, hired architect William R. Dubois, and began construction in June.
Source: Cowboy State Daily, "Historic Plains Hotel In Cheyenne For Sale For $5.85 Million," October 8, 2023; Encyclopedia of the Great Plains, "Dubois William (1879–1953)"
The Plains Hotel opened as a five-story hotel with three elevators, 100 furnished rooms, private baths, and telephones in every guest room.
Source: Cowboy State Daily, "Historic Plains Hotel In Cheyenne For Sale For $5.85 Million," October 8, 2023; Haunted Rooms, "The Plains Hotel Cheyenne"
Cowboy State Daily reported that Astrid, associated with Astride A Starship, LLC, purchased the hotel in this year.
Source: Cowboy State Daily, "Historic Plains Hotel In Cheyenne For Sale For $5.85 Million," October 8, 2023
The Historic Plains Hotel's official website advertised 131 guest rooms and suites, while current travel listings identified an operating hotel at 1600 Central Ave in Cheyenne.
Source: The Historic Plains Hotel official website, accessed August 2026; Business Travel News hotel listing, May 2, 2025
Every claim gets rated. A business's own website can never earn "documented."
Historical accounts of the March 1911 opening describe a five-story, 100-room hotel with three elevators, private baths, and telephones in every guest room. These amenities were unusual for a Cheyenne hotel of the period.
The hotel's current official history calls it the first hotel in the area to offer a telephone in every guest room, and historical summaries confirm that every room had a phone at opening. This review did not locate a regional comparative survey of other hotels' amenities, so the first-in-the-region superlative remains plausible rather than documented.
Architectural and Wyoming-history sources identify William Robert Dubois as the Plains Hotel's architect. He was one of Wyoming's most prolific designers of public, commercial, and residential buildings in the first half of the twentieth century.
Historical accounts describe the Plains Hotel as a five-story building when it opened in 1911. No reviewed source supports a 1925 addition of a fifth floor.
Rosie is a widely repeated hotel legend. Versions say a honeymooning bride found her husband with another woman, killed the pair, and then killed herself; sources disagree or provide no firm evidence on date, room number, and details. No contemporaneous police, coroner, court, marriage, or death record was located in this review to establish that the alleged event occurred.
The fifth floor of The Plains Hotel was added in 1925.
The Plains Hotel opened in 1911 as a five-story hotel. Historical descriptions of the opening list five stories, three elevators, and 100 guest rooms.
Source: Cowboy State Daily, "Historic Plains Hotel In Cheyenne For Sale For $5.85 Million," October 8, 2023; Haunted Rooms, "The Plains Hotel Cheyenne"
Thomas Heaney alone commissioned and built The Plains Hotel.
Thomas Heaney helped lead the campaign for a modern Cheyenne hotel, but the Cheyenne Securities Company formed in 1910 to develop it with backing from local business leaders.
Source: Cowboy State Daily, "Historic Plains Hotel In Cheyenne For Sale For $5.85 Million," October 8, 2023; Haunted Rooms, "The Plains Hotel Cheyenne"
The Rosie murder-suicide happened in Room 423 in the 1920s.
The Rosie story is a recurring ghost legend, but reviewed versions provide inconsistent or unsupported details. Sources variously place it in a fourth-floor room or Room 444 and do not establish a date, identity, homicide, or suicide through contemporary records.
Source: Haunted US, "The Plains Hotel — Wyoming," May 14, 2026; Haunted Rooms, "The Plains Hotel Cheyenne," December 16, 2021; ForK on the Move, "Cheyenne, Wyoming — The Spirits of the West," October 29, 2018
My Ghost Story filmed an episode at The Historic Plains Hotel in 2012.
No reliable network episode listing, title, production record, or contemporaneous news coverage was located in this review to confirm a 2012 My Ghost Story segment at the hotel.
Source: Research review, August 31, 2026
The Plains Hotel survived because it was designed as a centerpiece of Cheyenne's commercial future rather than as a small railroad stop. Its prominent Central Avenue location, large original scale, Western-themed interior history, and continuing role as a hotel have made it adaptable across changing travel markets. Restoration and reinvestment under later owners have kept the building in hospitality use while preserving its public role in downtown Cheyenne.
The Historic Plains Hotel opened in Cheyenne on March 9, 1911, after the Cheyenne Securities Company hired architect William R. Dubois to build a major new downtown hotel. The original building was five stories tall and offered 100 furnished rooms, three elevators, private baths, and telephones in every room. It remains a working hotel at 1600 Central Avenue.
No evidence reviewed here establishes The Historic Plains Hotel as Wyoming's oldest operating hotel. It opened in 1911 and is an important surviving early-20th-century hotel, but a statewide oldest-hotel title would require a consistent comparison of older lodging businesses, surviving buildings, business-name continuity, relocations, and operating interruptions. The hotel should be valued for its documented 1911 significance rather than an unsupported statewide rank.
This review did not locate a reliable earliest newspaper, guidebook, hotel brochure, or archival source that first reported The Historic Plains Hotel as haunted. Modern haunted-location sources and Cheyenne ghost-tour material repeat the Rosie legend and other alleged phenomena, but they do not document when the story first appeared or prove that the alleged wedding-night deaths occurred.
Yes. Historical accounts of the Plains Hotel's March 1911 opening state that all 100 guest rooms had private baths and individual telephone connections. The hotel says this made it the first hotel in the area with a telephone in every room, although this review did not independently verify that regional first-place claim.
William R. Dubois designed The Historic Plains Hotel. Dubois was a prominent Wyoming architect whose work included public, commercial, and residential buildings across the state during the first half of the twentieth century.
1600 Central Ave, Cheyenne, WY 82001
(307) 638-3311
The Historic Plains Hotel is in downtown Cheyenne near the Union Pacific Depot area. Confirm current room availability, dining hours, parking, pet policy, accessibility, and event schedules directly with the hotel before visiting.