# Nanichant Inn (Nanichant House)

- URL: https://palmerdivideresearch.com/places/nanichant-inn-nanichant-house/
- Also known as: Hotel Nanichant
- Kind: Stores, hotels and other businesses before 1950
- Status: Historic or vanished
- County: Douglas County, Colorado
- Point: 39.2572, -104.9869 (from a cited description (good to a few hundred feet))

- Updated: 2026-10-20

## What we know

Built about 1889 for the Red Stone Town, Land and Mining Company, the resort venture of John D. Perry and other investors, together with the dam on Bear Creek that made Lake Wauconda (S-0243). It was first called the Nanichant Inn, after Nanichant Rock, and faced east; an 1891 Douglas County News advertisement announced it open under the management of Miss Hammond (a 1971 Perry Park history); George Nickson helped build the hotel and the dam, and the resort closed in the early 1900s (Barbara Cannon's history) (Larkspur Historical Society files, S-0199). Guests came by stage from the Larkspur and Greenland depots (S-0243). The Castle Rock Journal carried its advertisement for mineral springs on Aug. 30, 1893 (S-0016); in late 1901 the Journal's Larkspur column had A. Ferguson, manager, and Miss E. M. Hammond, proprietor, leaving the inn for the winter. Visitors from the Rocklands at Palmer Lake went on to 'Perry Park's Nanichant Inn' in 1899, and a party 'dined at Nanichant hotel' in August 1903 (Edwards, S-0230). Weber and Schlupp, from the Castle Rock Journal, have the 1888 company's 20-room hotel opening in July 1891 under Miss Hammond, golf, horseback riding and home-cooked meals by 1900, and a new manager, Underwood, holding a Thanksgiving turkey shoot in 1902; they give its end as a cyclone that demolished it (Journal, Aug. 14, 1903) and elsewhere as a fire in the 1920s (ch. 27-28, pp. 152-158; S-0262). The newspapers settle it. The Journal of June 27, 1888 has George Brace beginning a 20-room hotel that week, to bear the name of the old sawmill, and on July 1, 1891 the Nanichant House under Miss Hammond. The cyclone of Thursday, Aug. 6, 1903 tore the roof off the big veranda and badly damaged the outside, but the owners had carpenters at work and the damage repaired within two days. A Clifton Inn, with its entrance moved from the west side to the north, opened at Perry Park under new management in 1905 and ran into 1906, apparently the same building renamed. On a Wednesday afternoon in April 1929 the bunkhouse on R. P. Lamont's Perry Park ranch, formerly the old hotel building, burned to the ground (Castle Rock Journal and Record Journal, 1888-1929, and Rocky Mountain News, Aug. 7-9, 1903; CHNC, S-0268). So a fire in 1929 ended it; the cyclone's 'demolished' is the outlier.

## Where it was

The Perry Park Country Club's history puts the hotel 'Southwest of the lake where the 18th tee is currently located' (S-0243); placed at the 18th tees in OpenStreetMap (2026-10-17), south-southwest of Waucondah Reservoir. One modern source for the spot; good to a few hundred feet. It falls in the NE1/4 of Sec. 22, T9S R68W, the quarter of the 1892 Perry Park post office (see that entry); whether the office was in the hotel is not known. A 1971 Perry Park history's 'some hundred yards west of where the main business office in Perry Park today (1971) stands' cannot be checked.

Placed from a written description, such as a land section, a distance from a landmark or an old survey note.

## Sources

- S-0016: https://palmerdivideresearch.com/sources/#s-0016
- S-0045: https://palmerdivideresearch.com/sources/#s-0045
- S-0103: https://palmerdivideresearch.com/sources/#s-0103
- S-0199: https://palmerdivideresearch.com/sources/#s-0199
- S-0230: https://palmerdivideresearch.com/sources/#s-0230
- S-0243: https://palmerdivideresearch.com/sources/#s-0243
- S-0262: https://palmerdivideresearch.com/sources/#s-0262
- S-0268: https://palmerdivideresearch.com/sources/#s-0268

## Nearby

- [Perry Park post office (1892)](https://palmerdivideresearch.com/places/perry-park-post-office-1892/): 0.2 mi southwest
- [Perry Park Manor House (1891)](https://palmerdivideresearch.com/places/perry-park-manor-house-1891/): 0.2 mi northeast
- [Perry Park](https://palmerdivideresearch.com/places/perry-park/): 0.3 mi west
- [Sentinel Rock inscription cave (stage waiting place, 1870s-1890s)](https://palmerdivideresearch.com/places/sentinel-rock-inscription-cave-stage-waiting-place-1870s-1890s/): 0.3 mi northwest
- [B-17 crash (1944)](https://palmerdivideresearch.com/places/b-17-crash-1944/): 0.8 mi southeast
- [Glen Grove Cemetery](https://palmerdivideresearch.com/places/glen-grove-cemetery/): 1.5 mi northeast

Source numbers (S-0000) refer to https://palmerdivideresearch.com/sources/. Compiled by Michael Christensen for Palmer Divide Research; CC BY 4.0.