02.3 Construction of the San Marcos Hotel Begins

...About twenty-five men are now actively engaged in the preliminary work on the big hotel. Most of the week just past has been given to rounding up the excavation work, placing the concrete and rock crushing machinery, hauling gravel from the station to the hotel site and erecting the two bunk houses and kitchen and dining room to be used by the hotel working force. The week has been ideal for the workers, the days being delightfully cool and cloudy for the most part. It has been the wise part of Superintendent of Construction W.R. Haog to give employment to many of the men owning land on the Chandler holdings. Before another week has passed it will probably be necessary to add many more workers to the force, many of them skilled. This may necessitate the importation of outside labor.

The cook house, dining room, and two bunk houses for the hotel workers were completed Monday and Tuesday. Bob Plenty, proprietor of the Chandler Hotel, Mrs. Plenty and assistants set up grand accommodations for the hotel men in the new quarters. This move was made necessary by the demand of transients for accommodations at the old hotel. Every day, parties are arriving to look over the townsite and farming lands, preliminary to making investments.

During the week, twelve carloads of gravel to be used in the cement work on the San Marcos arrived in Chandler, together with much more building material. The steel for the reinforced concrete work is on the way, somewhere between Pueblo, Colorado, its shipping point, and Chandler. Superintendent Hoag is hopeful that a shipment of steel will reach Chandler before Monday. Everything else is ready for it and when the steel arrives activity at the hotel site will be greatly increased.¹