Trail Inn Hotel Then and Now

200-202 E Chestnut Street/Wyatt Earp Boulevard

The traffic around Dodge City’s Santa Fe Depot has waxed and waned over the past 150 years. There was a time when it was the center of activity. The AT&SF Railroad employed an incredible number of workers and they all needed places to stay. Not to mention the people traveling to Dodge by train. Hotel rooms and funds were limited so boarding houses sprang up in strategic locations around town.

Two such houses later became the Trail Inn Hotel. The 1899 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map shows an empty lot at the northeast corner of Avenue A and East Chestnut Street. Directly east of this lot was a frame dwelling at what was then 402 East Chestnut. This was before the staggered street numbering system and also before that little block of Avenue A became a driveway leading to a parking lot.

A house was built on the empty corner lot sometime between 1905 and 1909. Bridge gang foreman B. F. Mills lived there until about 1910, when it was bought by Charles and Mary Geitgey. The house next door was occupied by a round house worker named W. H. Stuhr.

The 1911 Sanborn shows frame dwellings at 200 and 202 East Chestnut Street. The block had been renumbered and both old and new street numbers are shown. By 1915, Mrs. Josie Wagner was operating a rooming house next door to the Geitgey family.

In April of 1917, the Geitgeys received approval to build a frame house costing $5,500. The article didn’t specify whether it was an addition or new construction but the 1918 Sanborn shows a larger plastered rooming house on the corner of Avenue A and East Chestnut Street. The new structure had approximately 20 rooms for boarders.

By 1920, Josie Wagner had relocated to 100 Military Avenue. Her former rooming house was demolished and the Geitgeys constructed a $17,000 addition on that lot in the spring and summer of that year.

Construction was delayed briefly over a tiny union dispute.

Many boarders at the Geitgey Rooming House were railroad workers who often stayed for years at a time. By the early 1920s, the name had been changed to Trail Inn and pretty much the entire Geitgey family pitched in to keep it running.

The 1926 Sanborn shows the hotel had been expanded into the U-shaped building many of you will remember.

Mary Geitgey died in 1934 followed by Charles in 1938. The Trail Inn Hotel stayed in the Geitgey family and continued operations. A late 1930s Federal Writers Project piece by William Brown for the American Guide Series indicated the hotel had 48 outside guest rooms with free parking.

In the mid-1950s, James “Bill” and Gertrude Goddard took over the Trail Inn Hotel. By 1960, it was advertised with 46 rooms which were semi-air conditioned. E. B. and Frances H Manning assumed management around 1962 and by 1967, the aging hotel was operated by Marlin and Ina Piper. Then the Urban Renewal project came along.

This photo was taken just prior to demolition. It doesn’t appear to have been in terrible shape but I have never seen photos of the interior. Regardless, Wyatt Earp Boulevard needed to be widened so all of the structures along this stretch had to go.

Here’s how the corner looks today:

I’m not entirely certain when that block of Avenue A along with its connector, Minden Place, were vacated. You can still make out the footprint from above with the Google Maps satellite layer. Click on the image to view the full map.

It’s wild to compare the current street alignment to the old Sanborns. The old layout was definitely awkward with that sharp turn on Front Street right at the west end of the depot. There was no way US Highway 50 was going to run through town without it being fixed. So the argument was that Urban Renewal had to occur or else the highway designation would be assigned to the bypass north of town…which is what we have now anyway.

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