This year marks the 60th anniversary of the Treasure Mountain Inn! And 2025 also marks their second time acting as our home base for the Historic Home Tour – the first being their 50th anniversary ten years ago! The Park City Museum Historic Home Tour (on Upper Main Street and Daly Avenue this year) will take place on Saturday, June 21 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Get your tickets now!
Construction of the 56-unit inn began in the summer of 1964, only a few months after the opening of Treasure Mountains Resort, and when it opened in 1965 was Utah’s first ever condominium-style hotel. Treasure Mountain Inn’s development was part of a broader effort to modernize the town as it shifted to a new economy: ski tourism.
The Park Record reported in February of 1965 just how important TMI was to this new era. They wrote, “Sunday was one of the nicest, brightest days we have enjoyed in Park City… and our city was visited by the greatest number of visitors since the big new ski recreation program [Treasure Mountains Resort] was started in this area.” They continued that “a steady stream of cars” drove in and out of Park City all day to get the first glimpses of the inn, estimating that 3,000-4,000 people toured the new condominium hotel, which was already sold out of units, save for two studio rooms.
TMI was developed by D.C (Dewey) Anderson, Melvin H. Jensen, W. Allen Pelton, and Keith B. Romney of Treasure Mountain Inn Inc., all of Salt Lake City. They designed it with modern resorts in the West (like in Lake Tahoe, California and Aspen, Vail, and Breckenridge, Colorado) in mind.
Credit: Park City Historical Society & Museum, Himes-Buck Digital Collection
The inn sits on prime property near the top of Main Street where the Welsh, Driscoll, and Buck mercantile store used to stand. According to former Museum employee Shontai M. Pohl, “in many ways, the opening of Treasure Mountain Inn paralleled the opening of” Park City’s finest general store. She related that the store was formed as Conlon, Welsh & Company in 1893, and “was the town’s largest development and very important to Park City’s commercial scene.” As the store grew and changed partners, it became Welsh, Driscoll, and Buck, Inc. It was in continuous operation from 1893 until 1954.
As mines closed in the 1950s and wealth disappeared in town, the store closed. The building remained vacant and eventually deteriorated until it was purchased and torn down to accommodate Treasure Mountain Inn. Though it replaced an iconic mining era structure, the original inn did pay homage to Park City’s mining heritage with its décor and theming, including a mural by Joseph Pumphrey.
Married duo Hedda and Leo Wahler, immigrants from Yug-Slavia and the Netherlands, respectively, were hired as the first managers of TMI, continuing Park City’s long tradition of immigrants being the foundation of our town and economy. The two Europeans met while working at Hotel Utah in Salt Lake City and were married soon after.
Treasure Mountain Inn has of course changed quite a bit from those early years. It has seen its fair share of restaurants and businesses attached to the retail spaces, while tenants have also come and gone. And while it’s first two festivals were not headquartered at TMI, Slamdance Film Festival – the even more independent film festival that spun off from Sundance – made Treasure Mountain Inn its home from 1997 through 2000 and again from 2003 through 2023 (all but three festivals held in Utah – Slamdance has since moved to Los Angeles, starting earlier this year).
Despite its importance to Park City and its historic age, Treasure Mountain Inn is only partially recognized as historic by the City. It was included in an update of Park City’s Main Street National Historic District, but it so far has not been included on Park City’s Historic Sites Inventory, which comes with historic preservation protections. The Park City Museum views TMI as an historic structure, including it each year in its historic preservation ribbon program and by including it in historic walking tours and historic home tours.