In July 2000 Enders Hotel was condemned. The next July it was open for business and looked just as beautiful as it did the day it opened. By Rebecca Long Pyper • For Yesteryear
A black-and-white photograph hangs behind the front desk at Enders Hotel.
Guests who don’t look will miss it. And those who see it will be fooled.
It’s a shot of the same lobby in which they stand, taken almost 100 years ago. The pictured lobby is dressed in dark wainscoting and trimmed in heavy beams; the wood craftsmanship is still the highlight of the lobby. The light fixtures with surprising arts-and-crafts feel look just like those washing the walls in light today. Even the box for room keys looks like it’s been hanging in the same spot, holding the same keys since 1917.
It looks like Enders is a study in preserving what has always been at 76 South Main Street in Soda Springs, but it’s not. Instead it’s a story of meticulous matching and custom fabricating to reproduced what wasted away and was looted from the hotel.
The only things remaining from the early heyday is the row of golden-oak rocking chairs flanking the lobby and the bulky clock hanging above the front desk. “It is a new building in an old shell. It was in such disrepair they couldn’t save much,” Hansen said.
When the hotel was opened in 1917, it was only a two-story building; the third story was added the following year. When the hotel opened, Idaho’s oldest pharmacy, Eastman Drug, moved into the adjacent building unit. After the drugstore relocated again in 1946, a restaurant took its place, and as the hotel deteriorated, the restaurant stayed open.
The hotel was condemned. In the basement staircases led to nowhere. The ceilings were falling down, water damage stained the walls, holes had been hammered through the floors. The roof was shot. “People had ransacked this building so bad. It’s sad that it got to that point, but what’s awesome is that Rex Maughan came and saved it,” Hansen said.
Maughan grew up in Soda Springs, graduating from Soda Springs High School in 1954. He built a career in business, founding natural health and cosmetics company Forever Living Products International and Forever Resorts International, which operates getaways all over the world. Now a Paradise Valley, Ariz., businessman and philanthropist, his Forever Living Products sees an excess of $2.3 billion in annual revenues.
The renovation was ambitious: When completed, the hotel was to look as identical to the original as possible. To kick things off, Rex held a class reunion. Classmates tromped through the dilapidated building lit by flashlight, and Rex knew the next year’s reunion would be vastly different. And workers only had one year do rework the entire four-level structure because it was his intention to hold a class reunion every year in his newly acquired Enders Hotel.
So the team, led by general manager and Rex’s brother Brent Maughan, got busy. Using old photos, tiles — the exact same handmade tiles from the same company who made the originals — were laid on the newly reinforced main floor. Transom windows were uncovered. Oak was shipped in and milled in a Pocatello shop, then installed and stained and lacquered, then hand rubbed and lacquered again for a rich and antique finish. The oak beams on the ceiling were put up. Rex’s interior design crew purchased light fixtures at an antiques auction, and lobby sconces were crafted to look like the originals. “We wanted to put that building back just like it was — same decor and the whole works — which is what we did,” Brent said.
The second floor became a museum level, with each of the 10 rooms featuring different artifacts and themes, from mining to medicine. “Over 90 percent of the items here is from the community,” hotel manager Kelly Hansen said.
The third-floor space was reapportioned so each of the sixteen rooms would have its own bathroom, and every room was decorated differently, though all the furniture is period — from the 1920s or earlier.
The project wrapped one year and two weeks from the time it started, and reunions since then have been much more comfortable than the first tour. Nowadays the hotel’s business is largely corporate, with businesspeople who regularly travel to Soda Springs staying at the hotel each time they visit. Hotel management has also opened Somewhere ‘N Tyme, a gift and antique shop in the hotel, and continues to operate the Geyser View Restaurant. Summers are the busiest time, and it gets busier all the time. But making money was never the objective. “It was never a point of consideration that it would be something that would pay for itself. It was basically a contribution to the community,” Brent said.
The hotel advertises itself; the management spends virtually nothing on advertising, and Hansen thinks the story of the place has a lot to do with the appeal.
“It’s just part of history. This is a grand hotel, and it would have been a shame to see it go down,” she said.
Is the hotel haunted?
Rumor has it that Enders hasn’t been completely vacated by early guests.
When asked if the place was haunted, hotel manager Kelly Hansen said, “It depends on what you believe.” General manager Brent Maughan wasn’t so vague. He said the contractor took photos the day renovation began, and when the film was developed, a clear image of a ghostly face showed up in the photo. He has employees who swear the old rockers rock without any mortal sitting in them.
Several paranormal organizations recognize Enders as one of the most haunted places in the country.
The Enders Hotel: A Memoir
Enders Hotel serves as the setting for a 2008 memoir by Brandon R. Schrand. The book, winner of the River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Prize, tells the story of a family who bought the building, made it their home and hoped to bring it back to life.
An Orchid recipient
In 2002 the Enders Hotel received the Orchid Award from Preservation Idaho, the Idaho Historic Preservation Council, for excellence in historic preservation. Orchid awards are granted annually to projects adhering to the Secretary of the Interior’s standards in preservation, restoration, renovation, or adaptive reuse.
