Filed Under Virginia City

Anaconda Hotel (Faiweather Inn)

Virginia City National Historic Landmark District

The oldest section of this building, dating to 1863, was first a simple one-story building that housed a restaurant called the “Young American Eating House.” A butcher shop followed from 1866 to the 1880s, and then in the 1880s the building was a hotel/saloon. It became the Anaconda Hotel and Saloon in the 1890s under proprietor Frank McKeen. Renaming it the Fairweather Inn after the discoverer of gold in Alder Gulch, in 1946 Charles Bovey raised the height of the old hotel to two stories and added a “new” façade that duplicates the gold rush-era design of the then-demolished Goodrich House in Bannack.

Images

Anaconda Hotel, Virginia City
Anaconda Hotel, Virginia City Old Anaconda Hotel and restaurant, lower Wallace Street, north side, Virginia City, Montana, now the Fairweather Inn, built on the site of the Anaconda Hotel in 1946. Source: PAc 956-235, Montana Legacy Photograph Collection, Montana Historical Society Research Center Photograph Archives, Helena, MT. Creator: Unknown photographer Date: 1940-1949
Anaconda Hote/Fairweather Inn, Virginia City
Anaconda Hote/Fairweather Inn, Virginia City View looking northeast at building facade Source: Courtesy of Montana Heritage Commission Creator: Kate Steeley, Montana Heritage Commission Date: Oct 2019

Location

305 West Wallace Street, Virginia City, Montana | Private

Metadata

The Montana National Register Sign Program, “Anaconda Hotel (Faiweather Inn),” Historic Montana, accessed March 29, 2024, https://historicmt.org/items/show/851.