The Baldplate Inn in Colorado has 12 rooms, one of which is full of keys. A century ago, to honor the tradition of a detective novel about the hotel, the owner used to give a key to every guest. After the war instead the guests started to bring them to the hotel as a present. There are keys to ships, planes, submarines, to Buckingham Palace, the Pentagon and the cellar of Mozart. In this gallery you’ll find pictures of the keyroom and the hotel that existed for nearly a century.
In 1917 they opened this small hotel in Colorado, just outisde of Estes Park. The manager got the unusual habit of letting his guests took away the keys. The choice derives from the novel “The Seven Keys to Baldplate” by Earl Derr Biggers, in which all seven hotel guests believe that they alone possess the keys to the place. The real owner of the hotel actually continues the tradition of the novel, giving its customers the keys to the place as a present. This game lasted until the First World War, when the cost of the metal has skyrocketed.
But a whole new tradition began when, year by year, guests of Baldplate have started to turn back the keys. This collective ritual of traveling back to Baldplate lasted about 90 years, until today. The result is a room containing approximatively 30,000 keys!
American History Savers, an organization of American Archivists, is working on documenting the history of the travel behind every single key. A curious and interesting news indeed!
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