Hotel de Paris was a Norman inn built in a great silver mining camp by a mysterious Frenchman called Louis Dupuy. Opened in 1875 and richly furnished from New York and abroad, it became nationally noted for continental delicacies and the literary bent of its proprietor, a philosopher, social rebel, and master cook. Upon his death in 1900, Dupuy was revealed as Adolphe Francois Gerard, a French gentleman and refugee who had formerly been a journalist in Paris, London, and New York.