Collection: Books and Periodicals > Nevada County Historical Society Bulletins

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Title: Volume 063-2 - April 2009 Collection Type: Books and Periodicals Collection Name: Nevada County Historical Society Bulletins # of Pages: 6 Download PDF: User Login Required Download OCR Text: User Login Required

Date Scanned: 2014-03-26 07:29:08 OCR Software Version #: tesseract 5.4.1 Item Sourced From: PDF First Created: 2025-03-17 04:06:03 Last Updated: 2025-03-17 04:06:03

Original Held At: Searls Historical Library Location: 161 Nevada City Hwy, Nevada City, CA 95959

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oo ~~ Mysterious Guest at the Washington Hotel—Part I by Maria E. Brower VER SINCE HE TOOK POSSESSION OF THE HISTORIC Washington Hotel in rural Nevada County, strange sightings, ghostly appearances and eerie sounds have been witnessed by Hank DeCorté and his staff and friends. From time to time they have heard the sounds of footsteps and doors opening in the building when no guests were present. Furniture inexplicably moved and shook and sent loose articles flying about the rooms and onto floors. People walking down a certain hallway on the hotel’s third floor sensed that they had bumped into something—or someone. And these were just a few of the creepy and ghostly happenings that had been reported. The name of a mystery-woman in the hotel’s register caused Hank and his wife Sue to speculate about a possible connection between her and the unusual events. The guest, whose name appeared regularly in the guest book every month between 1899 and 1902, was someone who called herself “Alma Russell.” The mystery was that, one hundred years later, no one could say who she was, why she had been there, where she came from, or why she then vanished. An interview with DeCorté in the Sacramento Bees “Neighbors Section,” by staff writer Grace Karpa (October 31, 1999) includes the information that more than one person at the hotel had seen a ghostly woman in the hotel. “The ghost’s dark hair is worn up in the style of respectable women of the day, and her skirt covers her feet. Her blouse is demure pink or rose color,” Hank DeCorté said. “An old hat found in the wall upstairs is decorated with faded pink ribbon.” Sue DeCorté wondered if it had once belonged to Russell. She told a Sacramento Bee reporter that she did not The Washington Hotel in the Nevada County village of Washington. (Searls Historical Library photo.) On + Nevada County Historical Society Bulletin Ne VOLUME 63 NUMBER 2 APRIL 2009 -, believe Russell was a prostitute, but ventured a guess that she could have been a seamstress, milliner—or the daughter of a manager of one of the nearby mines. Sue also wondered if Russell might have been a teacher, postmistress or secretary at one of the mines. The only definite information revealed by the hotel register was that Alma Russell appeared to have come from Maybert, now a ghost town, but once a thriving community seven miles east of Washington that sprang up at the site of the rich Yuba Mine. Starting with that information, Sue visited the Searls Historical Library in Nevada City to research local history. There she learned that Alma Russell was not listed in any existing index; no birth, marriage or death record for that name could be found in the official Nevada County vital record indexes. One bit of curious information seemed to link the mystery woman with another guest who identified himself as “W. Earp” on the hotel register on December 20, 1901, and who occupied the room directly across the hall from Alma Russell. While working at the Doris Foley Library for Historical Research I answered a long-distance phone call from a resident of Hawaii who had read the Sacramento Bee story on the Internet and wondered if there could be a connection between Alma Russell and the famed lawman/gunfighter, A century-old photo of Washington’s elite in the bar room at the Washington Hotel. (Author s photo.) See ee ee