 After winning a legal battle over the rights to the Smuggler Mine, the richest lode in the area, and leaving Macy's, he commissioned the building of the hotel and the Wheeler Opera House, both bearing his name, and a house in the city's residential West End.Wheeler meant for the hotel to be the equal of great European hotels such as Claridge's in London and the George-V in Paris.He loaned $60,000 ($ in modern dollars) to another local innkeeper to build the hotel.