Whispers of the past: Exploring Miners Hospital’s ghosts

The Miners Hospital, established in 1904, served the mining community for decades before closing in 1968. Over the past year, strange occurrences have fueled speculation of ghostly activity.

PARK CITY, Utah — The Miners Hospital, now situated in City Park at the heart of Park City’s Old Town, started out as an actual hospital in 1904. The hospital’s rich history, from treating miners to delivering babies, and later hosting art exhibits, adds to its mysterious charm. Over the course of the last year a few events happened that we can currently only attribute to ghosts. Where these ghosts come from could be explained by the Miners Hospital’s history.

Miners Hospital opened October 1, 1904

After years of having to head down to Salt Lake City, without the convenience of I-80, money contributed from miners’ paychecks made the establishment of the first hospital in Park City possible. The land was donated by Eliza Nelson. After running the hospital for less than a month, Eliza and Colonel John Nelson’s daughter Mamie was replaced by Isabel Grant.

In its initial configuration, the nurses who cared for the patients and oversaw day-to-day operations had break areas and beds on the second floor. The hospital staff mostly treated men with mining accidents. This configuration lasted until 1919 when financial difficulties forced the hospital to close.

Miners Hospital returns to duty

One of its former nurses, Margaret Clarke opened a maternity hospital in her home on Woodside Avenue after that and was able to purchase the Miners Hospital in 1922. She ran the Miners Hospital to serve Park City. When she reopened the hospital, equipment purchased for a temporary hospital was donated to the Miners Hospital, including an X-ray machine. The second floor was renovated to include more windows. During her tenure, many babies were born at Miners Hospital. It is believed that the maternity services were provided on the second floor.

Hospital Day at Miners Hospital

Hospital Day was first celebrated in Chicago in 1921 and Clarke quickly organized annual Hospital Day festivities in Park City.  She opened Miners Hospital for tours and presentations by the doctors. It became an elaborate celebration with music and a group photo of all the mothers with babies born at Miners Hospital during the previous year. This continued until the 1940s. Childbirth and pneumonia were major factors in Park City deaths. 30% of children under the age of two died from one of these.

Miners Hospital ceases being a hospital in 1968

In 1949 Lennie Schlup, a registered nurse and nurse supervisor at Miners Hospital, rescued the hospital from closure by purchasing it and running it until her retirement in 1964. With dwindling patient numbers and funding, the hospital hung on by a string. Lennie Schlup even worked 24-hour shifts to keep providing services. Two years after she sold the hospital to a Salt Lake doctor, the hospital closed for good.

Miners Hospital takes a wild ride

The downward spiral continued through its transition to the Palace flop house for ski bums and the White Mule Saloon to facing demolition. Preservationists came to its rescue. In 1979 the historic building was carefully moved to City Park. After being restored and renovated it served as the city library from 1982 to 1993.  Since then it has housed various non-profits, including City Hall during its Marsac Building renovation. Now known as the Miners Hospital Community Center it has been hosting the MINERS 9 Art Exhibits on the last weekend of the non-winter months since September 2023.

Playful ghosts make themselves known

During the second MINERS 9 art exhibit, a potter had a frog-pin vase on display with live flowers. Since MINERS 9 is a three-day show, she left the flowers there overnight. The next morning, the exhibit manager unlocked the building and noticed the flowers on the floor but didn’t move them. The flowers were arranged on the floor perfectly perpendicular to the table with the vases. First the artist thought a window must have been left open and a fluke wind gust blew the flowers off the table, but they were all arranged such that the flowers were facing the table…the opposite direction from any normal wind action.

After 1922 the second floor was nicknamed the ‘sunshine room’ and is likely where the children were born. This did seem like the kind of thing a child playing with the flowers would do. Since no children were in the building after the artist left, this had to be a ghost child. It didn’t happen again. No artwork was damaged. A friendly ghost.

Six months later the ghost appears again

“Did you hear that it happened again? Again, on the second floor,” said Peg Bodell. Sundyn Woolf paints on skateboards. On the second day of the April exhibit, she walked in to find two of her skateboards rearranged. Standing, balanced on each other against her display table. Once again nothing else had been touched.

Peg Bodell assured everyone that no one else could have broken into the building. The one time she forgot to disable the alarm before unlocking the door, the police were there within two minutes.