Wild Women Hotel Owners who became Millionaires

By Jacqui Nelson

A bold entrepreneurial spirit could lead to fame and fortune in the Wild West. Why be a guest in a hotel when you could own it and manage it exactly how it needed to be managed? Meet two historic hotel owners whose savvy business skills and passion for real estate development made them millionaires.

Sarah Horton Cockrell 

( born 1819 in Virginia ) 

In 1847, Sarah lived with her husband in a tent on Mountain Creek until they could purchase a headright along Texas’ Trinity River. Together they ran the Trinity River ferry service, operated a sawmill, and also worked in brickmaking and construction. Since Sarah's husband couldn't read or write, she handled the business records, correspondences, and money.

When her husband was killed in a gunfight in 1858, she continued managing her family's businesses (which then had three hotels) with the assistance from her son and son-in-law. In 1859, she opened the St. Nicholas Hotel which was destroyed in the 1860 Dallas fire. That didn’t stop her. She kept building and opened the Dallas Hotel, the St. Charles, a private residential subdivision, and also a multi-story office building.

In 1870, she formed the Dallas Bridge Company through which she built an iron suspension bridge over the Trinity River, connecting Dallas with North Texas. For the next ten years, she managed and collected the toll on the bridge.

When she died in 1892, she was said to have owned a quarter of what was then downtown Dallas and had become one of Texas' first millionaires.

Margaret Jane Boag Anderson

( born 1859 in Iowa ) 

In 1889, Margaret married a man who worked at one of California’s early orange orchards. He was 19 years her senior and some say he died leaving Margaret a widow with two young children. Others say he remarried eight years after he married Margaret.

Margaret began her hotel career working with Almira Parker Hershey (a hotel proprietor and property developer who'd gotten into business by working for her father, a lumber and farming magnate).

By 1903, Margaret and her son Stanley were managing Almira’s Hotel Hollywood. Despite the hotel's growth (expanding from 16 rooms to 250 and becoming one of the best-known hotels in the area), Margaret and Almira’s manager-owner relationship was quarrelsome. In 1909, both parties filed lawsuits that lasted two years.

Their prolonged public dispute led the Rodeo Land and Water Company to form a partnership with Margaret. The company wanted a flagship hotel to spur development and Margaret wanted ownership of land, something she’d been unable to secure from Almira.

In 1912, Margaret achieved her victory over Almira when she told everyone at the Hollywood Hotel that she’d resigned and the hotel was closed until new management could be hired. She then offered jobs to the staff and rooms to the guests at her new hotel, the Beverly Hills Hotel. She relocated everyone before Almira heard the news.

Margaret didn’t stop there. By 1914, she had the patronage of Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, the top film-star couple of their era. Margaret’s Beverly Hills Hotel (built for $500,000) became the top celebrity playhouse where she indulged her guests while maintaining an ironclad policy of guarding their privacy.

If you could own a hotel, which hotel would it be? Or if you could build a brand-new hotel, where is your dream location? 

My choice would be...a hotel in a forest (far from the city) or on a beach (far from the city). Okay, there's a pattern! I'd want my hotel to be a quiet sanctuary surrounded by nature :)

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