Redmond Hotel

The Redmond Hotel is significant as a good example of a public boarding house in a rural, Mormon community. Based upon a comprehensive survey of Sevier County, it is the best example of this building type in the county. It is also an excellent example of structural adaptation of a building to local events for the “hotel” has evolved as the community evolved. The Redmond Hotel stands today as one of the best remembered “old hotels” in Sevier County.

The Redmond Hotel is located at 15 East Main Street in Redmond, Utah and was added to the National Register of Historic Places (#80003964) on June 20, 1980.

Ifedmond Utah is a small agricultural community settled in 1876, surveyed in 1879 and “given” a local government in 1878. in 1879, John Johnson, an early Jtedmond settler, town surveyor and Mormon bishop contracted to have a three-room stone home built on Main and Center. The probable builder of the home was Jacob Nielsen, a Mormon, local stone mason, and Danish immigrant like John Johnson. This early structure is the core of the Ifedmond Hotel on which later additions were built.

The appointment of Johnson to the office of bishop, a position he held for 10 years, reflected his growing economic and social importance in the area. Around 1888 Johnson had a larger and more stylish home built east of his first home on Main Street. The older, smaller home was rented out, probably to his son-in-law and business partner, John B. Sorenson with whom he established the financially successful Redmond Co-op.

In 1892, two years after the Denver and Rio Gande Railroad arrived in the Sevier Valley, Johnson sold his main street properties to Henry McKenna Sr. The latter was an early settler of Salina whose past and future experiences with hotel building leads one to suppose that his purchase was a form of “hotel speculation.” Redmond was only a few miles from the Salina railhead and its untapped agricultural and mineral resources could be expected to bring in new residents. This demographic change was expected to cause, as it had elsewhere in Utah, the need for the temporary or seasonal services of teachers, salesmen, laborers, miners and entertainment troupes. To accommodate these mobile residents a pifolic house would be necessary for the community.

Henry McKenna sold his property in 1894 to his son, Henry McKenna Jr. Redmond’s economy continued to improve and so in 1503, the new owner mortgaged the Johnson properties to finance the remodeling of the three-room home into a public boarding house. In 1904, apparently unable to satisfy his creditors, McKenna Jr. sold the structure to James Frandsen who had been hired to do the remodeling work for the hotel (the new owner had done the remodeling work in the area before under taking the building of the Redmond Hotel). The daily operation of the boarding house given over to his wife Miranda as James continued to farm and raise livestock.

After sixteen years of successfully keeping boarders the Fandsen’s sold the building to Anthony C. Willardsen a local merchant. In B20 Anthony opened a store in the front and hired Ada Nielsen, granddaughter of Jacob Nielsen, to run the boarding house. The collapse of agricultural prices that followed World War I adversely affected the local economy and thereby affected the success of the Willardsen enterprise. With two outstanding mortgages and under threat of public sale for payment of back taxes, he sold the boarding house to Ada. With her extra income as post mistress and sales clerk, she was also able to keep the boarding business afloat. It was during her ownership that the public house became widely known as the Redmond Hotel. Ada continued to rent rooms through the depression. In 1946 Charles Hampton bought the building and continued to rent rooms until 1951 when he readapted the public house again, this time back into a private residence. The economic boom for Resdmond had come and gone and with it the Redmond Hotel.