Overview

The history of The Ice Palace Inn began 100 years ago when the city of Leadville, Colorado, built the famous Leadville Ice Palace. Constructed to bolster a sagging economy, the Ice Palace took 36 days to build and covered an entire five acres of land. Constructed of 5,000 tons of ice and 307,000 board feet of lumber, it was the largest ice palace ever built on the North American continent and the only one to have ever been fully utilized. It housed enormous ice sculptures in the many rooms and had towers 90 feet tall. It contained an ice rink, a dining room, a grand ballroom, a snack bar and kitchen, multipurpose room, cloakrooms, storerooms, a riding gallery housing a carousel, a mini-theater and toboggan runs. Every room, with the exception of the ice rink, was heated; colored electric lights illuminated the crystalline castle, creating a fairyland atmosphere at its location on Leadville's Capitol Hill. Leadville's 1896 whirlwind social season overshadowed the chinook winds that taunted the Ice Palace until it was officially closed on March 28, 1896. Some of its lumber was used in 1899 to construct what is now The Ice Palace Inn, built on the same hill as the original Ice Palace. In 1994, Giles and Kami Kolakowski restored it as a bed and breakfast inn, naming the rooms after the original Ice Palace's rooms: The Grand Ballroom Suite, The Skating Rink, The Crystal Carnival, The King's Tower and Lady Leadville