Overview
The Baker Hotel opened in 1929 in Mineral Wells, Texas, a fourteen-storey Spanish Revival skyscraper improbably crowning a small town, built to bathe crowds in the mineral 'crazy water' that made the place a spa boom-town; celebrities from Judy Garland to Clark Gable took the waters, the Army filled it during the Second World War, and decline closed it in 1972. For half a century the vast empty tower defined Texas urban legend: town telling and years of sanctioned tours described a woman on the seventh floor — in the story, a manager's mistress — trailing perfume, along with an elevator man, a boy in the pool area, figures at the windows, voices and cold spots, and national paranormal television filmed repeatedly inside. A major restoration to return the Baker to a working hotel and spa has been underway in recent years, so the building is a construction site: exterior viewing only until it reopens, with status confirmed before publishing. The record should present the lore as the town's telling — embroidered, beloved and unproven — around a genuinely magnificent survivor.