Preeceville's Golden West Hotel

Preeceville, c. 1912. Source

The hotel shortly after it was built in 1912. Source

One of the most unique old hotels I have visited is the one in Preeceville. The town is located in the rolling hills of east-central Saskatchewan, approximately 100 kilometres north of Yorkton at the junction of Highways 49, 47, and 9. 

The Preeceville hotel is unique because it is the only one I know of that had porches and verandahs added rather than removed during its lifetime. In addition, while there have been several serious fires on Preeceville’s Main Street over the years, this large wooden structure has managed to escape the flames, mainly because of the wide spaces between the hotel and neighbouring buildings.

The three-storey Golden West Hotel was built in 1912 by Scott Rattray. According to Preeceville’s history book, Lines of the Past (1982), the basement excavation had to be abandoned the previous fall, “due to frost that even defied an attempt to blast with stumping powder.” Before the hotel opened, Rattray sold it to Rudy Ramsland, followed by Jack Lynch. 

In 1911, Swan Carlson and his wife Emma moved to Preeceville and bought the Temperance Hotel where they set up a soda fountain and restaurant. After their business was destroyed by fire in December 1914, the Carlsons bought the Golden West Hotel which they operated until 1917. They then built a general store in town which they operated until 1938 when they moved to San Diego, California.

Swan and Emma Carlson, n.d.  Lines of the Past (1982)

In 1929, the Mattison family bought the Golden West Hotel for $5000. Oscar and Clara Mattison, born in Norway, had come to Preeceville from Minnesota in 1913. Family members recall in the town’s history book that only one room in the hotel had linoleum flooring. “The lobby had an oiled board floor. The kitchen and dining-room floors were not painted and had to be scrubbed weekly,” the Mattisons write. Water works were not installed until the 1940s, so water was drawn from a cistern in the hotel’s kitchen. “Every day pails of water were carried upstairs to fill the large pitchers. Each bedroom was equipped with a wash basin and water pitcher. … The toilet facilities consisted of a commode. It had to be emptied two or three times daily, thoroughly rinsed and sterilized. A septic tank was installed in the backyard.” The only bathtub in the hotel was in the upstairs linen closet for family use only. The water was heated on the kitchen stove and carried upstairs.

For about a year and half, the Mattisons managed to meet the payments on the hotel. Then the Depression of the 1930s took its toll, and for many years the owners were only able to pay the interest and taxes. To help make ends meet, Mrs. Mattison made all the bread for the hotel. She also kept a couple of cows for milk until about 1938. The Mattison family continued to operate the Golden West Hotel until 1968 after 39 years of ownership.   
 

Golden West Hotel c1940 source

Sign in the bar of the hotel. Joan Champ photo

Subsequent owners of the Golden West Hotel have been Joe and Lucy Kruk (1968-1971), Peter and Monty Sharber (1971-1973), Albert and Erika Hanke (1973-1976), Marvin and Norma Abrahamson (1976-1987), Darton Holdings Ltd. (1987-1996), Reid Junek (1996-1998), and Brock Junek (1998-2001). Roger and Shannon Prestie became the owners of the Preeceville hotel in 2001.

The Golden West Hotel continues to operate on the corner of Main Street and Highway 49 in Preeceville. The hotel features six guest rooms and two light housekeeping suites. There is full food service in 150-seat bar with daily specials. The hotel was listed for sale by Shannon Prestie in 2018.

Golden West Hotel, 2013. Joan Champ photo

Preeceville hotel, 2006.  Courtesy of Ruth Bitner

© Joan Champ, 2011

View Larger Map

Hotel Hygiene

Room with a sink still conveniently located beside the bed, Borden Hotel, 2010.  Joan Champ photo

Sink in the room, toilet and bath down the hall.  Still, some small-town Saskatchewan hotels have come a long way from the “thunder mug” under the bed.  In the days before indoor plumbing, hotel rooms were equipped with chamber pots, wide-mouthed vessels used by the room’s occupants as a toilet during the middle of the night. The container was then covered with a lid or cloth and slid under the bed until the chambermaid retrieved it in the morning. People used to joke that these were traditional baseball hotels - "pitcher" on the dresser, "catcher" under the bed.

Tony Thibaudeau explained how the sanitation system worked at the Macklin Hotel in Prairie views from Eye Hill (1992):  “In those days the hotels provided a large wash bowl and a jug of water in each room and a matching chamber pot under the bed, and on each floor there was a sanitary toilet.  The chamber maid would change the beds, clean up the rooms, empty her scrub water and the contents of the aforementioned containers into a metal chute that was attached to the fire escape at the back of the hotel with an opening on each floor and had a barrel at the bottom to catch the flow, the contents of the barrel were bailed out with a pail and disposed of in a covered pool down the lane. I was fortunate enough to have this job for 35 cents a week.”  

The Golden West Hotel in Preeceville, operated in the 1930s by the Oscar Mattison family, did not get water works installed until the 1940s. “We had a pump in the kitchen to draw water from a cistern. A pail sat under the sink to catch the waste water. Every day pails of water were carried upstairs to fill the large pitchers.  Each bedroom was equipped with a wash basin and water pitcher. … The toilet facilities consisted of a commode.  It had to be emptied two or three times daily, thoroughly rinsed and sterilized. A septic tank was installed in the back yard. There was a bathtub in the upstairs linen closet for family use only. The water was heated on the kitchen wood stove and carried upstairs.”   

During the 1930s at Nipawin, the Avenue Hotel was owned by the Puterbaughs.  It had 16 guest rooms, a dining room, kitchen, laundry room, electricity, a wood furnace – and no running water. Instead, there was a cistern pump in the kitchen. Guests were given a pitcher of hot water with their wake-up call (a loud knock on the door) which they then used to fill a porcelain wash bowl sitting on a wash stand.  Guests were also supplied with soap, towels and a pitcher filled with cold water.   

A circa 1950s guest room at the Imperial Hotel, Sturgis, 2008.

These primitive conditions continued well into the 1940s and into the 1950s at some small-town Saskatchewan hotels. “It is not so many years ago (1940s),” the Wilkie local history book (1988) states, “that you might catch the hotel housekeeper emptying ‘pots’ over the fire escape on the second floor.”  In 1948, Mr. and Mrs. Sydney Roitman completely renovated the interior of the Wilkie Hotel. The most modern touches of all were newly installed bathrooms, hot and cold running water, and a septic tank.  In his book, To Get the Lights; A Memoir about Rural Electrification in Saskatchewan (2006), Dave Anderson recalls that life on the road in the early 1950s without running water in hotel rooms was more than inconvenient.  “It was a hardship,” he writes. “Most municipal roads I travelled on were gravel …so choking dust in our vehicles was routine. … At day’s end it was impossible to get refreshed with a washcloth in the wash basin with a quart of two of cold water from a pitcher in which often floated a dead fly, moth or wayward ant. So the communal tub at the end of the hall, if there was one, shared with 20 or so other guests, was reluctantly used.”

© Joan Champ, 2011