The Metlen Hotel
The Metlen Hotel is a hotel in Dillon, Montana. Historic hotel with ghost reports. It sits in the archive under haunted locations. The dossier holds 1 reported claim and 1 legend — all telling, no verified spine yet, and the file says so plainly. Access details are unverified — research before visiting. 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 The Metlen Hotel haunted?
The record holds 1 claim, 1 legend — filed as reported, not verified. The heaviest filing is classed documented legend. The archive documents the claim; it takes no position on the ghost.
The record — long form
The Metlen is the canvas hotel's replacement — Joseph Metlen's Second Empire palace built on the exact ground where the Corinne, the cloth-partitioned hotel that followed the railroad, burned in 1891. The $30,000 sixty-room building had call bells and electricity and steam heat 'absolutely free from hammering' — the freighter who came to Montana in 1867 betting Dillon would be a city.
The governor came to the 1898 opening; the penthouse watched for aircraft in the war; the hotel closed in 2008 but the bars stayed open in the Old West clutter of pistols and skulls. The ghosts are the cowboys the staff say aren't threatening — the keys that vanish, the furniture that moves, the footsteps in the building that's been a landmark for a hundred twenty-five years.
The file keeps the Metlen: the burned Corinne's site, the 1898 opening, the WWII penthouse, and the cowboy ghosts in the closed hotel.
The Metlen is the archive's Dillon file — the freighter's palace and the ghosts the staff call fun.
Why this file matters
The Metlen is the archive's Dillon file — the 1897 Second Empire hotel and the cowboy ghosts.
A hotel built on a fire keeps its warmth — the file's suggestion being that the Metlen's hold is the succession: the canvas Corinne's ground, the brick Metlen's luxury, and the friendly dead the caretakers still host.
Hotel Metlen is a historic building in Dillon in Beaverhead County, Montana. Built in 1897 by Joseph C. Metlen, it is at 5 S. Railroad Avenue. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983. Prominent in the community, it was built to accommodate travellers and is located by the city's railroad stop — across the right-of-way of the Union Pacific Railroad from the main business district of Dillon. The hotel featured two historic saloons, dance floor, restaurant and a gaming casino. A two-story building made of sandstone bricks, it is Second Empire in style.
Hotel MetlenThe record of claims
Southwest Montana recounts accounts of ghost sightings. The Dillon hotel's reports are the kind old lodgings accumulate — footsteps after hours, presences in rooms, the house working the night shift. It's a documented legend: the telling is real, the contents remain folklore. It is the sighting the place is known for, and it hasn't stopped.
Southwest Montana recounts accounts of ghost sightings. The hotel keeps the account on its own record — the sort of haunting a building earns one guest at a time. The account has a collector's pedigree — written down as legend, which is the most honest status it can hold. 'Southwest Montana’s Haunted Places' carries the account. The legend does what legends do — it explains the place in a way the records can't.
Sources on file
- 01Southwest Montana’s Haunted PlacesSouthwest Montana · tourism · A3
Field notes & open questions
Tourism notes a closed upper floor; no unrestricted room access implied. Verify operator and historic uses before assigning current lodging status.