Joseph Salterio (1860-1892)

Hotel Owner associated with The Sundance Kid

Born: 1860 at Halifax, Nova Scotia
Died: 6 July 1892 at Calgary, Alberta
Buried: Union Cemetery, Calgary, Alberta, plot B:01:015
Contributor: Roy Aggarwal

Grand Central Hotel

Calgary has a connection to the Sundance Kid, notorious outlaw and train robber.

From 1888 until his death 4 years later, the Grand Central Hotel on Atlantic Avenue (9th Avenue) was owned by Joseph Salterio. The hotel had survived the great fire of 1886 that had destroyed a large portion of the town. Salterio was a well known and popular proprietor. He had “a host of friends and few or no enemies. He was most liberal and kind hearted[1].In 1892, during Salterio’s ownership, Frank Hamilton and Harry Longabaugh (better known as The Sundance Kid) took over the hotel’s saloon. But their partnership was short lived.

Hamilton had a reputation as a bully. In business, he often intimidated his partners – or rivals – to get his way. When Hamilton tried to cheat Sundance, according to one account, the Kid leaped over the bar “and before his feet hit the floor, his gun barrel was jammed in Frank’s middle”. The dispute was settled but Sundance grew tired of his partner and sold his portion of the saloon business to return to the United States.

The Grand Central Hotel was spared from the Calgary town fire of 1886 (photo).  It was replaced with a brick structure as a fire safety precaution.  But later on, the hotel finally burned down in January of 1920, after Salterio’s death and not long after Sundance left Calgary.

Grand Central Hotel after 1886 fire

Final Years for Joseph

Salterio died only months after Sundance’s departure. He passed away at the age of 32, a victim of long term alcoholism. He is buried in Calgary’s Union Cemetery, Section B Row 1 Plot 13. The obelisk monument is of sandstone and badly eroded. His grand-nephew renewed the epitaph with a brass plaque on the rear.