Too many have come into the Boulder Dam Hotel wondering how they can exploit it for money. They’ve assaulted it and it’s these the hotel soon makes aware of its anger. Among these were Raymond Spilsbury, drowned in the Colorado River in 1945; Won Jon Ling, dead of cancer in 1947; Ted Grusd and Clarence Watson taken by heart attacks in 1955 and 1960; Ronald Mulder killed in a bloody automobile accident in 1991. Others were economic or emotional victims: Angelo Manzi, Cliff McCorkle, Chris and Patricia Dycks, Calamity Jayne.

But sometimes the hotel likes those who become in-volved with it, who are simpatico with its force, and who listen to its be-guiling whispers. The hotel keeps these people safe and prosperous. There have been fewer of these it’s true, but that’s because there are fewer good people in the world than bad. Among these have been Tommy Thompson, the idiosyncratic night clerk who still takes his place behind the desk each evening; Ferde Grofé, who composed Sunrise Over Lake Mead in his suite; owners Hal and Jackie Brown and Frank and Ruby Adams; managers Vern and Darlene Burk.

The Boulder Dam Hotel might seem hard to please, but all it finally wants is what anyone wants—to be recognized and spoken to, included, respected for what it provides. And what it provides are the embrace of warm, comfortable rooms where people can sleep or make love; a shadowy Underground for drinking and dancing; basement cubbyholes where Boulder City’s history can be safely stashed away.

To anyone who comes into the hotel and thinks it’s just bricks and timber, wander its halls at two or three in the morning, sit in one of its empty rooms or on the landing of a secluded stairway. That breath against your face does not come from the air conditioner; that isn’t water circulating through the walls; and that low, rumbling beat you feel in the floor is not the boiler.

Sponsored by the Boulder City/Hoover Dam Museum.