Where Did All the Dirt Go?:  A Theory About the Excavation and Making of Hotel de Paris

One of the most intriguing questions surrounding the evolution of Louis Dupuy's Hotel de Paris is what happened to all of the rock and soil excavated during the property's expansion?

Over time, Hotel de Paris grew dramatically from the ca. 1870 Powers Building (a false-front two story commercial structure) into a spacious Gilded Age hospitality complex of well-appointed rooms, efficient work areas, and discreet storage spaces located in two buildings.  Historical accounts document the involvement of Chinese laborers in some of this work, particularly in the excavation and construction associated with the expansion of the property.

Excavation on a rocky building site in Georgetown, Colorado would have produced an enormous quantity of displaced material, which proprietor Louis Dupuy confirmed in a newspaper article.  Rock had to be broken. Soil had to be moved. Foundations and a cellar had to be carved into mountain terrain.  But where did all this debris go?

My theory is that much of it may never have left the property.  Instead, the material excavated may have been systematically reused as part of the remarkable physical expansion of Hotel de Paris—providing fill, foundation material, and structural support for the Annex Building, kitchen expansion, east addition, warehouse, and the stone walls enclosing two exterior courtyards.  This possibility makes both practical and economic sense.

East Courtyard wall under construction (1890)

Building Without Waste

In nineteenth-century Georgetown, hauling tons of rock and soil away from a construction site would have required considerable labor, equipment, and expense. Hotel de Paris, however, was a constantly evolving enterprise operated on a constrained parcel of land. Every available inch of space mattered.  So, why transport useful material away when it could be used immediately?

Excavated stone could become construction material. Smaller rock and rubble could serve as fill beneath floors or behind retaining walls. Soil could be redistributed to level uneven areas or create usable building platforms.  Seen through this lens, Hotel de Paris was not simply expanded—it may have literally been built from the ground that was excavated to make room for it.

Rubble Walls May Hold an Answer

The most visible expression of this theory may be found in the hotel's two courtyards.  The substantial stone walls that define portions of the outdoor space have long been associated with the work of Chinese workers. This construction represents an extraordinary example of skilled labor embedded directly into the historic landscape.  But perhaps these walls tell an even larger story.

Could the stone used in their construction have come directly from excavation occurring elsewhere on the property?  If so, the walls are more than architectural features. They may represent part of an integrated system of construction in which excavation and building occurred simultaneously. Material removed from one area was not discarded as waste but transformed into the infrastructure necessary to support the hotel's growth.

A Complex Built in Layers

The Hotel de Paris we see today was not constructed all at once. It evolved.  The Annex Building, kitchen expansion, east addition, warehouse, and cellar walls represent different phases in the property's transformation from a modest commercial building into one of the most celebrated establishments in the Rocky Mountains.  That evolution required more than architectural ambition. It required moving mountains—sometimes quite literally.

The labor involved in excavating foundations and reshaping the site was physically demanding. Chinese laborers, whose contributions to the development of Colorado communities have too often been overlooked, may have played an essential role not only in removing material but also in determining how that material could be reused.  Their work may therefore survive throughout Hotel de Paris in ways we have not fully recognized.

Rock pile near Lion Gate (1905)

Reading the Buildings Differently

This theory invites us to reconsider what constitutes a historic artifact.  We tend to focus on humanmade objects: furniture, wallpaper, clothing, documents, and architectural details. But the very ground beneath Hotel de Paris—and the material concealed behind walls and beneath floors—may also contain evidence of the people who built and transformed the site.

Perhaps the Annex rests partly upon excavated spoils.  Perhaps the kitchen expansion incorporates fill removed from another portion of the property.  Perhaps the east wing and warehouse occupy ground reshaped with material that was once considered excess.  And perhaps the courtyard walls themselves are constructed from stone pulled directly from the site during the excavation process.

These possibilities cannot yet be presented as established fact. They remain a theory requiring additional archaeological investigation, documentary research, and close examination of the buildings.  But historical interpretation often begins with a question.  Where did all the dirt go?

At Hotel de Paris, the answer may be hiding in plain sight.  The rocks beneath our feet, behind our walls, and supporting the buildings themselves may not simply be part of Georgetown's landscape. They may represent the physical remains of an extraordinary process of adaptation, ingenuity, and labor.  If this theory proves correct, it will add another remarkable dimension to the Hotel de Paris story: the built environment was not merely constructed in the mountains.  In many ways, it may have been constructed from the mountains.

How a Mining-Camp Bakery Became a Restaurant Legend of the American West

An early Hotel de Paris bill of fare or menu provides a fascinating glimpse of Louis Dupuy’s restaurant during its formative years (1875–1879) when it transitions from Delmonico Bakery to a restaurant within Hotel de Paris. It suggests the establishment was already more sophisticated than an ordinary mining-camp eating house, but its cuisine was not exclusively—or even primarily—French. Rather, Dupuy appears to have combined French culinary training and European standards with hearty American frontier fare.

Bill of Fare, 1870s

This 1870s bill of fare should not be interpreted as the complete expression of Dupuy's cuisine. It is more likely an everyday menu, with special or seasonal dishes appearing when available.

This early version of Louis Dupuy’s menu is especially valuable because it captures the restaurant at the moment when a modest bakery/restaurant operation was becoming more ambitious. The menu also challenges the idea that “French restaurant” did not necessarily mean that every dish was French.

What Does the Bill of Fare Reveal?

 

1. It was an ambitious à la carte public restaurant, not a boarding house serving family-style.  The heading, “ORDER BILL OF FARE,” indicates customers made their choices from various selections. There is an unusually broad range of options for a small Colorado mining town: multiple cuts of beef, veal, mutton, pork, ham, eggs prepared several ways, fried foods, cold cuts, dairy dishes, cakes, toast, coffee, tea, and chocolate.

2. Meat was the centerpiece of the meal.  The menu is extraordinarily meat-heavy and designed for a substantial, protein-rich meal, appropriate to a community of miners, businessmen, and travelers in a high-altitude mining town.  Customers could choose pricey beef such as porterhouse, sirloin, tenderloin steaks, or veal cutlets.  More affordable options were mutton chops or pork steaks.  There is also ham, bacon, sausage, liver with salt pork, pigs' feet, brains, tripe, cold roast beef, cold ham, and tongue.

3. Early on, Dupuy elevated his menu offerings through a variety of preparations by offering onions, mushrooms, and breading for meats.  His menu occupies an interesting middle ground because his ingredients are familiar to Americans, but the preparation reflects Dupuy's European culinary background.

4. The restaurant catered to diverse levels of appetite and pocketbook by offering a significant range of prices. A customer could order a 10¢ (approximately $2.55 USD) serving of wheat cakes, corn cakes, buckwheat cakes, toast, coffee, tea or milk—or spend $1.00 (approximately $25.50 USD) on a porterhouse with mushrooms.  This makes the restaurant seem less like an exclusive luxury establishment and more like a graded dining experience: inexpensive staples for an ordinary customer alongside elaborate and expensive preparations for someone wanting something special.  Particularly revealing, is the 25¢ (approximately $6.37 USD) threshold: orders above 25¢ came with bread, butter and potatoes, making a substantial meal easy to construct.

5. Eggs were an important part of the restaurant's repertoire.  The egg section is surprisingly extensive and includes boiled, fried, scrambled, poached on toast, and a broad range of specialty omelets.  The last group is especially telling. A rum omelet, jelly omelet, and mushroom omelet may go well beyond the basic frontier boarding-house breakfast and demonstrate Dupuy's interest in culinary variety.

6. The absence of game and fish itself is interesting.  The menu has prominent headings for “GAME” and “FISH,” but the surviving image contains no dishes beneath them, which may indicate that those foods were seasonal or market-dependent, rather than consistently available. This is important because later descriptions of Hotel de Paris emphasize wild game and seafood, including oysters.  However, a March 1879 meal served to Jay Gould and other railroad and financial magnates included oysters, sweetbreads, and Peach Charlotte (a warm, baked pudding of stewed fruit and brioche bread with brandy sauce.

 

Birds-eye view of Georgetown, Colorado (1874)

What Kind of Restaurant Was It?

The Hotel de Paris Restaurant Dining Room could be characterized in the period 1875–1879 as a sophisticated European-influenced restaurant operating within a rugged American mining community—combining substantial frontier appetites with the culinary ambitions of a French-trained chef.  It was not yet the fully developed, luxurious Hotel de Paris restaurant that would emerge after the 1878–79 expansion after Dupuy purchased the Powers Building and renovated and expanded the restaurant dining room (christened Louis’) and constructed a new commercial kitchen.

What Kind of Cook Was He?

Louis Dupuy's genius appears to have been Europeanizing the experience of eating, rather than simply importing a French menu. A Georgetown customer could eat steak, pork, ham, eggs, potatoes, and bread—the foods already known—but could have them prepared with mushrooms, onions, sauces, and other techniques associated with more sophisticated cookery.  This helps explain why descriptions could regard the establishment as a first-class French restaurant while its surviving early menu looks remarkably American. Hotel de Paris was, from the beginning, selling quality, choice, refinement and Dupuy's personal culinary expertise, not merely French food.  After 1879, Dupuy offered increasingly elaborate European/French cuisine, fine wines from around the globe, and further developed his reputation as the Best Cook in the Colorado Territory, which attracted wealthy travelers and nationally prominent guests.