The Leger Hotel, in Mokelumne Hill, California

Mokelumne Hill, California

Mokelumne Hill is a census-designated place in Calaveras County, California, United States. The population was 646 at the 2010 census, down from 774 at the 2000 census. It is commonly referred to as "Moke Hill" by locals...

 is one of the oldest hotel

Hotel

A hotel is an establishment that provides paid lodging on a short-term basis. The provision of basic accommodation, in times past, consisting only of a room with a bed, a cupboard, a small table and a washstand has largely been replaced by rooms with modern facilities, including en-suite bathrooms...

s still operating in California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

. The hotel and courthouse building are registered as California Historical Landmark

California Historical Landmark

California Historical Landmarks are buildings, structures, sites, or places in the state of California that have been determined to have statewide historical significance by meeting at least one of the criteria listed below:...

 #663, and located in present day Calaveras County, California

Calaveras County, California

Calaveras County is a county located in the Gold Country of the U.S. state of California. Calaveras is the Spanish word for skulls; the county was reportedly named for the remains of Native Americans discovered by the Spanish explorer Captain Gabriel Moraga. As of the 2010 census, the county had a...

.

History

George Leger, a Frenchman

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 who came during the California Gold Rush

California Gold Rush

The California Gold Rush began on January 24, 1848, when gold was found by James W. Marshall at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California. The first to hear confirmed information of the gold rush were the people in Oregon, the Sandwich Islands , and Latin America, who were the first to start flocking to...

, opened his Hotel de France in 1851, as a wood-framed tent

Tent

A tent is a shelter consisting of sheets of fabric or other material draped over or attached to a frame of poles or attached to a supporting rope. While smaller tents may be free-standing or attached to the ground, large tents are usually anchored using guy ropes tied to stakes or tent pegs...

. Next door was the Calaveras County Courthouse, as Mokulemne Hill was the county seat

County seat

A county seat is an administrative center, or seat of government, for a county or civil parish. The term is primarily used in the United States....

 at the time. When the county seat was moved to San Andreas

San Andreas, California

San Andreas is an unincorporated census-designated place and the county seat of Calaveras County, California. The population was 2,783 at the 2010 census, up from 2,615 at the 2000 census. Like most towns in the region, it was originally founded during the California Gold Rush...

 in 1866, Leger bought the court building and incorporated into his hotel. One reason was that it was made of stone and thus had survived two fires that had ravaged the town previously. After restoration following another fire in 1874, the hotel became known as the Leger Hotel, and it has been in operation ever since. The bar, which features a stained-glass back bar with the date 1851 in it, reportedly came around Cape Horn and has been in continuous use.

The former courthouse building was also the location of the county jail, and remnants of the jail cells can still be seen in the building's cellar.

Ghosts

The hotel has the reputation of being haunted by ghost

Ghost

In traditional belief and fiction, a ghost is the soul or spirit of a deceased person or animal that can appear, in visible form or other manifestation, to the living. Descriptions of the apparition of ghosts vary widely from an invisible presence to translucent or barely visible wispy shapes, to...

s. Guests and employees have claimed seeing Leger himself as well as other people. Paranormal

Paranormal

Paranormal is a general term that designates experiences that lie outside "the range of normal experience or scientific explanation" or that indicates phenomena understood to be outside of science's current ability to explain or measure...

investigators have performed tests, but found results to be inconclusive.