The industrial prosperity of his copper mines in Butte and the reduction works in Anaconda encouraged Marcus Daly to set higher goals for his company town. Daly began to pave a road for the political and financial success of the town in 1887 with the design and construction of a full-scale urban resort in downtown Anaconda. The four-story Montana Hotel at 200 Main Street was completed in 1888 for $125,000 and was recognized as perhaps the most advanced and luxurious hotel in the Northwest for its time.

Historians believe that the Montana Hotel was built by Daly specifically to house legislators, other state and national dignitaries, and prominent visitors to the town once Anaconda was named the state capital of Montana, a dream that Daly hoped to achieve after the Montana Territory was named a state in 1889. It was designed by Chicago Architect W W Boyington, and the hotel retained a combination of French Renaissance and Romanesque architecture. Special detailing includes or did include terra cotta columns, a central arched entrance, red oak and eastern pine flooring, lead glass mirrors, gas lighting, a carved mahogany bar (now in Sun Valley, Idaho), Italian marble fireplaces, and state-of-the-art steam heat and running water. Marcus Daly even commissioned an artist to produce a wooden inlay of his favorite thoroughbred racing horse, Tammany, on the floor of the bar. D F McDevitt of Butte served as the local supervising architect and contractor on the hotel, which opened with a lavish ball on July 4, 1889. - NPS