👻 HAUNTED PLACE · EXP. Nº9478
ACTIVE
Baker Hotel (Mineral Wells, Texas)
The Baker Hotel opened on the evening of 22 November 1929, twenty-four days after Black Tuesday, in a spa town of about 6,000 people.
Where is Baker Hotel (Mineral Wells, Texas)?
- Location
- Texas, United States
- Type
- Hotel / inn
- Coordinates
- 32.809, -98.111
- Last updated
LOCATION
Why is Baker Hotel (Mineral Wells, Texas) said to be haunted?
Wyatt C. Hedrick designed it for T. B. Baker as a copy of the Arlington in Hot Springs, Arkansas; its National Register nomination calls it a thirteen-storey, 180-foot tower of 450 rooms, while the present owners advertise fourteen. Earl Baker closed it on 31 May 1963, a month after the seventieth birthday he had set as his deadline; local investors reopened it in 1965 and it shut for good in 1972. No one has paid to sleep in it since, which makes it a haunted hotel with no guests: the ghost walk that is its main attraction never goes inside. The stories are older than the tourism built on them. The earliest telling that can be fixed to a day, a Texas Escapes page last modified on 28 August 2002, names the two caretakers who reported them and states plainly that the year of the suicide it describes has not been verified. A 65-million-dollar restoration is running: the developers' own site, archived on 8 July 2026, gives the opening as 2028.
What is the history of Baker Hotel (Mineral Wells, Texas)?
Mineral Wells was built on well water. A pavilion went up beside the Crazy Well in 1895 and the Crazy Hotel followed; when fire destroyed most of that building in 1925, the town's civic leaders went looking for someone who could replace it with something bigger. They found Theodore Brasher Baker, an Iowa-born hotelier whose Texas chain already included the St Anthony, the Menger and the Gunter in San Antonio, the Stephen F. Austin in Austin, the Texas Hotel in Fort Worth, the Galvez in Galveston and the Baker in Dallas. Baker formed the Mineral Wells Hotel Company, engaged Wyatt C. Hedrick of Fort Worth, and after inspecting Hedrick's Arlington Hotel in Hot Springs, Arkansas, told him to build a reasonable facsimile of it.
Work began in 1926. Hedrick was an engineer by training who, in the absence of Texas licensing law, called himself an architect; he framed the building in poured-in-place reinforced concrete because Mineral Wells had no workforce skilled in structural steel. The excavation had barely been dug when Baker ordered the whole building moved back on its site so that a swimming pool could go into the hole already prepared to the south. That is why the Baker's pool sits at street level in a garden and not, as is often written, on the roof: it stands on its own columns and piers over a sub-surface area connected by tunnel to the hotel basements.
The Baker opened formally on the evening of 22 November 1929, twenty-four days after Black Tuesday. Its National Register nomination describes a thirteen-storey, 180-foot structure of 450 rooms and 250,000 square feet in yellow brick, topped by a rooftop ballroom called the Cloud Room and a forty-foot bell tower; the present owners advertise fourteen storeys, and the Texas Observer in 2019 measured it at fourteen storeys and 232,000 square feet. The Fort Worth Record-Telegram trailed the opening on 14 November and covered it on 23 November, and both cuttings are cited in the nomination's footnotes.
The hotel filed for bankruptcy in 1932 without ever closing its doors, and was reorganised as the Resort Hotel Company. What saved it was the army: Fort Wolters opened on 13 October 1940 and grew into the largest infantry replacement training centre in the country, with 30,000 men. The Baker hosted the state Republican conventions of 1952 and 1955 and the state Democratic convention of 1954. In 1952 T. B. Baker, elderly and childless, handed the chain to his nephew Earl M. Baker, who lived in San Antonio and announced that he would run the Mineral Wells house until his seventieth birthday. That birthday fell on 30 April 1963. True to his word, Earl Baker closed the hotel a month later, on 31 May 1963, ending thirty-four years of trading and more than two million guests and putting over two hundred people out of work. A public auction that August drew light bidding and no sale.
A group of local businessmen formed the Civic Development Corporation and reopened the hotel in 1965. Profits were thin and the venture lasted about two and a half years. On 3 December 1967, while visiting the building, Earl Baker died suddenly in it. The corporation sold the property in 1972 to Home Texas Trust, James Stewart and the United Funding Corporation, and it closed for good. It has taken no paying guest since.
The Baker was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on 23 June 1982. The nomination was not filed by a preservation society but by architects acting for the owner, and its last paragraph is a statement of intent: "Although the Baker is currently unoccupied, it is our intent to pursue a program of rehabilitation and renovation." Nothing came of it. The building passed to an Arizona family who held it from 1973. In 2007 a Dallas-Fort Worth investor, Laird Fairchild, contacted them; twelve years later he and his partner Chad Patton were still trying to close a sixty-million-dollar plan that stood twenty-five million short, having tried historic tax credits, tax-increment financing and even the EB-5 visa programme. Mineral Wells voters had approved sales-tax money for the project in 2014 with about 96 per cent in favour.
Timeline: the documented record of Baker Hotel (Mineral Wells, Texas)
- March 1925 Fire destroys most of the Crazy Hotel. Civic leaders recruit the hotelier T. B. Baker to replace it, and he engages Wyatt C. Hedrick after seeing Hedrick's Arlington Hotel in Hot Springs, Arkansas.
- 1926 Construction begins. Shortly afterwards Baker orders the whole building moved back so that a pool can be built in the excavation already dug to the south, at street level and over its own piers — not on the roof, as later accounts have it.
- 22 November 1929 The Baker Hotel opens formally in the evening, twenty-four days after Black Tuesday. The Fort Worth Record-Telegram trailed it on 14 November and reported the opening on 23 November; both cuttings are cited in the nomination's footnotes.
- 31 May 1963 Earl Baker closes the hotel a month after the seventieth birthday he had set as his deadline (30 April 1963), ending thirty-four years of trading and more than two million guests, and putting over two hundred people out of work.
- 3 December 1967 Earl Baker dies suddenly inside the hotel while visiting it, two years into the Civic Development Corporation's short-lived reopening. The nomination says only that he died suddenly; the 'massive heart attack' of later retellings is not in it.
- 1972 The Civic Development Corporation sells the property to Home Texas Trust, James Stewart and the United Funding Corporation, and the Baker closes for good. It has taken no paying guest since.
- 23 June 1982 The Baker is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The nomination, written by architects acting for the owner, ends by announcing a rehabilitation that never happened, and contains no reference to ghosts of any kind.
- 28 August 2002 Bob Hopkins's page on Texas Escapes, the earliest telling of the Baker's ghosts that can be fixed to a day, is last modified. It names two caretakers as witnesses and states that the year of the seventh-floor suicide 'has not been verified'.
- 7 December 2012 Ghost Adventures broadcasts 'Crazy Town', filmed inside the empty hotel. It follows an episode of Celebrity Ghost Stories aired on 31 July 2010 in which the actor Eric Balfour described a visit; a Reelz programme built on the same story followed on 10 September 2016.
- 15 April 2019 The Texas Observer publishes Jason Heid's report from the ghost walk: about 150 people that night, a first walk in 2012 that drew 252, a sixty-million-dollar restoration still twenty-five million short, and Angela Morgan promising the crowd orbs and mists in their photographs.
- 13 July 2024 The Mineral Wells Area News reports that the local partner Randy Nix has conditional documents signed for a USDA-guaranteed loan of about $25 million through Clear Fork Bank, with $15 million of private equity already in and completion then hoped for at the end of 2027.
- 28 April 2026 An EF-3 tornado with peak estimated winds of 145 mph strikes Mineral Wells on the Tuesday evening, damaging or destroying dozens of homes and businesses. The Baker is left standing.
- May 2026 CBS News Texas reports a sold-out fundraiser held inside the building — the first major event there in more than fifty years — and lists the work done so far: windows, doors, roof and asbestos abatement, with the hotel still 'a few years from completion'.
- 8 July 2026 The last capture of the developers' own website before this entry was written gives the position plainly: 165 guest rooms, fourteen storeys, a three-year renovation and, in capitals across the front page, OPENING 2028. The hotel has not reopened.
Is there a rational explanation for Baker Hotel (Mineral Wells, Texas)?
The Baker is a haunted hotel with no guests. Nobody has paid to sleep in it since 1972, which means that every account of what happens inside comes from caretakers, film crews, contractors or tour audiences standing on the pavement outside. The flagship attraction, The Baker Hotel Ghost Walk, does not enter the building at all: it is a ten-block walk around downtown, and the operator says so plainly.
Two documents that ought to mention the ghosts do not. The 1982 National Register nomination is the fullest history of the building ever written — 6,112 words on its construction, its finishes, its guests and its closure — and the words "ghost", "haunt", "spirit", "apparition", "phantom", "suicide", "drowned" and "legend" appear in it zero times, against 53 uses of "Baker", 64 of "hotel" and 7 of "pool" in the same file. The developers' own website is the same: across its home, about, history, future, team and contact pages, 4,321 words, "ghost", "haunt", "paranormal", "apparition" and "legend" all come out at zero, while "Baker" appears 66 times, "spa" 48 and "Mineral Wells" 32. The only two hits for "spirit" are "Daring Spirit" and "the burgeoning spirit of the recharged Mineral Wells". The people who own the ghost are not selling it.
The lore itself can be dated, and the dating is unkind to the version now in circulation. The earliest telling I could fix to a day is a Texas Escapes page by Bob Hopkins, last modified on 28 August 2002 and captured by the Internet Archive on 18 October that year — a decade before the ghost walk and eight years before television arrived. It is more careful than its descendants. Its seventh-floor woman is "possibly the mistress of the hotel manager", she jumps "from the top of the building", and Hopkins writes flatly that "the year of the incident has not been verified". He names his witnesses: Jane Catrett, who managed the empty building, and Ronny Walker, who ran weekend tours and reported the high heels in the lobby and the footsteps by the seventh-floor breaker box. Today's retellings give the woman a name, Virginia Brown, and move her fall to her own bedroom window. That name appears zero times in the 1982 nomination, zero times in Hopkins's 2002 page, zero times in the Texas Observer's 2019 report from the ghost walk, and zero times in a 2020 haunted-hotel listing archived in the same year — with "Baker" returning 53, 24, 73 and 33 hits in those same four files. A name and a mechanism have grown onto a story whose founding text says the date cannot be checked.
Hopkins's page also shows how the errors travel. It calls the Baker "fourteen stories" with "460 rooms", says the hotel "closed for good in 1970" and adds that Earl Baker died of "a massive heart attack" — the nomination says thirteen storeys, 450 rooms, 1972, and only that he "died suddenly". Sites that repeat the ghosts repeat the arithmetic.
The strongest witness against the ghosts is the guide herself. Jason Heid, reporting for the Texas Observer in April 2019, recorded Angela Morgan opening a tour of about 150 people with this: "Those of you that don't believe, I'm glad you're on this tour. Because as long as you're taking photos, at the very least you're going to leave here with orbs, apparitions, fogs, mists." The promise is not that something will appear but that a camera will produce something — dust, insects and flare, photographed at night against a black facade. Heid's closing line is the fairest summary anyone has written of the Baker's haunting: everyone leaves with a photograph of at least one ghost, the Baker itself.
Can you visit Baker Hotel (Mineral Wells, Texas)?
The Baker Hotel is closed, fenced and posted against trespass. There is no lobby to walk into and no room to book. The 1982 National Register nomination places it "On a block [b]ounded by Northeast First Street on the north, East Hubbard on the south, Northeast Third Avenue on the east and Northeast First Avenue on the west", and gives the street address as 200 East Hubbard Street; the developers' own site gives 201 East Hubbard St, Mineral Wells, TX 76067.
The restoration has run since 2019 without opening the doors. By May 2026 the team reported the windows, the doors, the asbestos abatement and the roof as finished, with most of the work behind the walls. Senior financing was secured through Clear Fork Bank against a USDA loan guarantee, and the developers put the build at roughly three years once contracts are signed. On 22 September 2026 their own site carried an opening date of 2029.
From the pavement the building can be read. Since June 2018 a row of blue interpretive signs commissioned through the Chamber of Commerce has run along the exterior of the ground floor, free and legible from the street at any hour. The nomination describes the arcade as engaging "the building on the south, west and east elevations", records "A forty foot single bell tower" completing the facade, and calls the Baker "easily the town's most viewed building, rising above the City from at least ten miles distance" from its 180 feet.
The Baker Hotel Ghost Walk is the organised way to hear the stories. Angela Burns Morgan, a Mineral Wells native, started it in about 2012 and says she interviewed more than a hundred people to assemble it. It holds 51 reviews on Tripadvisor as of 22 September 2026; reviewers there put the route at ten blocks each way, quote the cash price at twenty to twenty-five dollars a head, describe crowds that sometimes pass two hundred, and note that the walk enters no building.
The rest of the town is more open than its landmark. The Famous Mineral Water Company still bottles Crazy Water downtown. The Crazy Water Hotel, smaller and older than the Baker, reopened in 2021 after a $22 million renovation with 62 suites. Lake Mineral Wells State Park is a short drive east. An EF-3 tornado with estimated peak winds of 145 mph crossed Mineral Wells on the evening of Tuesday 28 April 2026, injuring five people and damaging homes and businesses along a track through the north-east of town, away from the Baker's block.
For the documents rather than the walk, the complete National Register nomination is a free PDF from the Texas Historic Sites Atlas, and it remains the best thing written about the building. The developers post restoration updates at thebakerhotelandspa.com.
Sources consulted
- Alan Mason and R. Gene Brooks, AIA/AICP (V. Aubrey Hallum Architects/Planners), «The Baker Hotel (of Mineral Wells, Texas) — National Register of Historic Places Inventory-Nomination Form (ref. 82004518, listed 23 June 1982)» — National Park Service / Texas Historical Commission, 1982 archive
- Jason Heid, «Ghosts of the Baker Hotel» — The Texas Observer, 2019 newspaper archive
- Bob Hopkins, «The Ghosts of the Baker Hotel, Mineral Wells, Texas (page last modified 28 August 2002; Internet Archive capture of 18 October 2002)» — Texas Escapes, 2002 web
- Mineral Wells Area News, «Baker team close to securing $25 million loan to complete restoration (Internet Archive capture of 7 August 2024)» — Mineral Wells Area News, 2024 newspaper archive
- CBS News Texas, «Mineral Wells rallies behind long-awaited revival of historic Baker Hotel» — CBS News Texas, 2026 newspaper archive
- The Baker Hotel Development Partners, LLC, «The Baker Hotel and Spa — official site of The Baker Hotel Development Partners (Internet Archive capture of 8 July 2026)» — thebakerhotelandspa.com, 2026 web
- Zak Bagans and others, «Crazy Town, Ghost Adventures, season 7 episode 11 (first broadcast 7 December 2012)» — Travel Channel, 2012 web
- S. E. Jenkins, «EF-3 tornado ripped through North Texas town, causing damage and injuries, officials say» — CBS News Texas, 2026 newspaper archive
Reviewed by V. Serrano on 2026-08-21 · How we verify our content
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