Finlen Hotel
Finlen Hotel is a hotel in Butte, Montana, built in 1924. Butte’s 1924 tower—the Copper King’s city hotel. It sits in the archive under haunted places and historic hotels. The dossier holds 2 reported claims, 1 legend and 1 documented fact — documented record and retelling kept side by side. It still takes guests. The dossier keeps the place and the story in the same record — which is what the archive is for.
· in your passport — stamped · open it
Is Finlen Hotel haunted?
The record holds 2 claims, 1 legend — filed as reported, not verified. The heaviest filing is classed local folklore. The archive documents the claim; it takes no position on the ghost.
The record — long form
The Finlen is the hotel copper built when the copper was running out. Butte's postwar slowdown had emptied the market, and the nine-story French Second Empire tower James Finlen raised on Broadway — modeled in miniature on New York's Hotel Astor — opened New Year's Day 1924 as one of only two substantial buildings the Richest Hill on Earth put up that decade. The town was contracting; the hotel argued otherwise.
Finlen money was Butte money — Miles Finlen came out of the Irish famine to mine the Buffalo, the Ramsdell-Parrott, the Minnie Healy, and his son James spent the fortune on the mansard tower that still crowns the district. The second tower, begun in 1927, stopped mid-rise when the Crash came — the unfinished ambition built into the skyline, a hotel that wears the copper bust in its bones.
The Finlen stayed the Mining City's address through everything — the labor wars, the Berkeley Pit eating the town's east side, the long decline and the preservation revival. The 1924 tower still operates beside its mid-century motor-inn wing, the Astor's miniature standing in the National Landmark district of the city that mined itself hollow — the grand hotel that outlasted the copper that paid for it.
The Finlen Hotel is the archive's copper-crown file — James Finlen's 1924 Second Empire tower on Butte's Broadway, modeled on the Astor, its second tower frozen unfinished by the Crash.
Why this file matters
The Finlen Hotel is the archive's Richest-Hill file — the 1924 tower built at the start of Butte's copper bust, a mansard-roofed Hotel Astor miniature that outlasted the mining economy it was bet on.
A hotel built against the bust keeps its tower — the file's suggestion being that the Finlen's hold is the second tower: the 1927 extension the Crash stopped, standing unfinished beside the one that opened.
Hotel Finlen is a historic hotel in Butte, Montana, United States, built in 1924.
Hotel FinlenThe long record
- 1924Built
Hotel constructed
- 1924Opened
Opened to use
- 1924History
Opened 1924 on the earlier hotel’s site; hosted presidents and Copper King-era guests. Finlen Hotel's documented history in Butte, Montana is the record the rest of the file stands on. The fact is historically verified — the part of the file that doesn't need hedging. The record appears in 'Finlen Hotel'. Documented ground is what separates this file from pure legend — this is part of it.
The record of claims
Reported a woman’s figure and a man in the lobby. A hotel in Butte, Montana with more than a century of check-ins gives the reports plenty of rooms to work with. Local lore carries the account; no documentation has ever caught up with it. Sources including 'Finlen Hotel' keep the claim in circulation. The figure remains the site's most-repeated sighting.
Reported footsteps and a presence in the upper floors. Finlen Hotel, a hotel in Butte, Montana, has kept the story in circulation longer than most of its guest registers. It's anecdotal evidence in the strictest sense — stories, repeated, unresolved. The anomalies are minor and stubborn — which is exactly why they're still in the record.
Reported a woman’s figure and a man in the lobby. The hotel keeps the account on its own record — the sort of haunting a building earns one guest at a time. The claim is neighborhood knowledge — retold locally, verified nowhere. The report is preserved in sources like 'Finlen Hotel'. Every community keeps one story like this; this is theirs.
Documented history
Opened 1924 on the earlier hotel’s site; hosted presidents and Copper King-era guests. Finlen Hotel's documented history in Butte, Montana is the record the rest of the file stands on. The fact is historically verified — the part of the file that doesn't need hedging. The record appears in 'Finlen Hotel'. Documented ground is what separates this file from pure legend — this is part of it.
Sources on file
- 01Finlen HotelWikipedia · encyclopedia · A4
Field notes & open questions
Historic haunted hotel batch; VERIFY task auto-queued.