What the Town of Georgetown and County of Clear Creek Could Have Lost

It is difficult to measure the value of something that never existed—or, in this case, something that could have disappeared. But imagining Georgetown without Hotel de Paris Museum makes clear that its preservation was not simply the saving of one historic building. It saved an important part of the community’s identity, economy, and connection to Colorado history.

Stewardship of Hotel de Paris

When The National Society of The Colonial Dames of America in the State of Colorado acquired Louis Dupuy’s Hotel de Paris in 1954, the property had already closed as a hotel and restaurant and was briefly operated as an antiques business. Instead of allowing the building and its contents to disappear through neglect, alteration, or dispersal, the Colonial Dames transformed it into a museum for the public. More than seven decades of preservation have resulted in a remarkably intact historic property, including approximately 90% of Louis Dupuy's furnishings.
 
Had that intervention not occurred, Georgetown could have lost far more than a building.  It could have lost one of the most tangible places connecting today's community to the period when Georgetown was a major center of Colorado's silver economy. Hotel de Paris operated within that world as a hotel, restaurant, and showroom for traveling salesmen. Today, it provides visitors with an unusually intact physical setting in which to understand that history rather than simply read about it.
 
The loss would also have diminished the historic landscape that helped distinguish Georgetown from other mountain communities. The National Park Service identified Hotel de Paris as a major reason for establishing the Georgetown–Silver Plume National Historic Landmark District in 1966. The district's designation, together with Georgetown's historic preservation efforts, helped establish the community's heritage as an important visitor asset.
 

Loss of Hotel de Paris (imagined)

For Georgetown, the consequences would have been particularly visible: A landmark would have disappeared from the town's streetscape, weakening the historic character that visitors come to experience and that residents expect.

 
A major visitor attraction would have been lost. Georgetown's tourism economy is built in significant part around its collection of historic places, including Hamill House Museum, Georgetown Fire Fighting Museum at Alpine Hose No. 2, the Energy Museum, and the Georgetown Loop Railroad.
 
Local businesses would have lost another reason for visitors to stop, stay, explore the commercial district, dine, shop… and return. This is especially relevant because Clear Creek County identifies heritage preservation and sustainable tourism as components of its tourism strategy.
 
A historic building is not merely an artifact; when preserved and interpreted, it becomes a place where successive generations can encounter stories about the people and circumstances that shaped their community.  Future generations would have inherited a story with fewer original places and objects through which to understand it. The museum's surviving guest registers alone contain more than 18,000 individual entries, offering researchers a remarkably direct connection to the people who passed through Georgetown during the hotel's historic period.
 
For Clear Creek County, the loss would have been broader still. Hotel de Paris is part of the interconnected collection of historic resources that gives the county a distinctive heritage tourism identity. The county's own tourism bureau describes the museum as a unique and unusually complete representation of early Colorado history.

Abandonment of Hotel de Paris (imagined)

Without Hotel de Paris, the county would have had one fewer authentic destination through which to tell the story of immigration, mining, entrepreneurship, hospitality, commerce, architecture, labor, and the cultural diversity of the nineteenth-century. The absence of the building would also have meant the loss of an irreplaceable collection of original furnishings and documentary evidence.
 
Most importantly, there would have been no opportunity to reinterpret the place for succeeding generations. A preserved Hotel de Paris allows the story to continue evolving—from Louis Dupuy's entrepreneurial life to the experiences of workers, builders, guests, women, immigrants, Chinese laborers, and the many people whose lives intersected with the property.
 
The preservation of Hotel de Paris therefore represents more than architectural stewardship. It represents an investment in Georgetown's ability to remember itself.  Had the property been demolished, radically altered, its contents dispersed, or simply allowed to deteriorate beyond recovery, Georgetown and Clear Creek County would have lost an irreplaceable historic resource before fully understanding its potential.
 
Instead, preservation created an enduring community asset—one that contributes to the character of Georgetown, strengthens the county's heritage-tourism offering, provides a place for scholarship and education, and allows people to encounter something remarkably close to the world Louis Dupuy and his contemporaries knew.

The real value of historic preservation is sometimes easiest to see by imagining the absence: not what Hotel de Paris contributes because it exists, but what Georgetown and Clear Creek County would be missing if it did not.