The guests were rich and famous.Nobody knows who built it?

In 1895, William “Curly” Neal and Annie Box Neal opened the Mountain View Hotel in Oracle, Arizona. Oracle was a tiny mining settlement at the time. It sits high on the north slope of the Santa Catalina Mountains, about thirty-five miles due north of Tucson, and the cool mountain air made it an ideal location. The Mountain View rivaled the very best hotels in elegance and accommodation, and its name soon carried far beyond Arizona. It operated successfully for nearly fifty years — and then the story was lost to history. And for a reason. Not because the business failed, but for a much sadder one: society turned on Curly and Annie.

The Neals had become pivotal figures in the development of the Southwest. Curly’s freighting operation was one of the largest in the Arizona Territory. Their names were well known, and their guest register held a long line of famous people. Buffalo Bill Cody himself — the most famous American alive — was often a guest, and a personal friend of Curly’s.

So why were Curly and Annie denied their place in the history books? What did they do wrong?

Only a handful of people alive today have ever heard this story.