Colorado Adventure, Part 6

Ghost towns. Not the silly, phony paranormal stuff. No, these are the little towns that sprang up around gold and silver strikes, from about the Civil War through the end of the nineteenth century. They flourished briefly and then disappeared after the mines stopped producing. Colorado is full of them, both marked and unmarked. Colorful characters, instant wealth, dashed dreams, tragedy--the ruins drip with all these elements.

Nothing seemed to stop the men determined to make their fortunes through mining. It was a dangerous livelihood. This defunct operation (the Hungry Five Mine, I believe) was clinging to sheer cliffs in Buckskin Gulch. It was shot with telephoto under low light, so I had to do some tinkering to make it more visible.

The first question is, how on earth did they get up there? The next question is, how did they get the ore down? The answer to the first: haven't the foggiest. Someone might say, "Ah, but I see a road!" Yes, friend, but the road was built to get equipment to the mine. The find came before the road. What possessed them to go up there before the road was there? The talus you see (the loose rocks comprising the lower portion of the slope) is pretty much at the critical angle, meaning, you step on it and it starts to move. Rock slide!

The answer to the second: they built an aerial tram with steel cables and bucket cars that brought the ore down to the Paris Mill, a stamp mill, from where I was shooting the picture.

 As a backpacker I've run across many mine works, cabins and graves marked on no maps. Some of the old towns persist with year-round residents, such as Fairplay, Alma, and Leadville. One of the things I learned on this trip is that active gold mining continues, with both old claims as well as new discoveries. The Colorado residents I spoke to insisted that there remains much mineral wealth and ore yet to be discovered.

Dor and I left our cabin on Tuesday morning, determined to explore four ghost town sites that are on the map. As we drove up Clear Creek Road, we ran across a herd of maybe twenty-five big horn sheep.

The females and the young run in herds, the adult males are loners (apparently don't play well with others). Female adults have horns, but not as large as the males. All these were adult females or young.

First stop was Beaver City (the beavers are still there, by the way).

Some of the cabins have been/are being restored. Some you can actually rent from the Forest Service to stay in. Further up the road was Vicksburg.

It was set up as kind of an unstaffed museum. Many of the cabins had been restored, and some were still owned and used by the descendants of the original miners.

After Vicksburg was Rockdale.

There was very little of a "ghost town" feel to this one, it looked more like a modern summer camp with the restored cabins. There is a great and commendable interest in Colorado to preserve its heritage. Unfortunately, some of the restoration efforts leave the cabins and structures almost indistinguishable from a modern rustic structure. To that degree, in my mind, they fail to preserve the historic character.

Our last stop was Winfield. Fascinating little town that has managed to preserve the historic feel of its founding.

The next morning we set our sights on St. Elmo, a ghost town about twenty miles SW of Buena Vista. Before we left, however, had to deal with a little ice on the windshield. Because of the very low humidity the temperatures change rapidly up here. When the sun goes behind a cloud, it gets chilly quickly!

St. Elmo sits just shy of 10,000 feet elevation, and was founded in 1880. It grew to a population of about 2000 people in its heyday. One of the mines produced over sixty million dollars of gold.

St. Elmo has permanent residents to this day. Although it is a combination ghost town/tourist trap, with people still living there, they have done an excellent job preserving the historic character of the town.

The building on the right is sided in some sort of sheet metal.

I am guessing that this was done to protect the structure from fires. In these tightly packed main streets in which all the buildings are made out of a very dry wood, if a fire broke out it would spread swiftly to neighboring structures. Many early mining towns were wiped out repeatedly by fires. For some towns, it was the end of the road. For others, if there was still an economic justification, they rebuilt. Fairplay's entire business district was wiped out by fire in 1873. I picked up a great anecdotal history of the area by Laura Van Dusen, Historic Tales from Park County: Parked in the Past. The author, in addition to writing, works  at the South Park Ranger District office in Fairplay. One of the many interesting stories was about the Fairplay fire.

We spent two fascinating days exploring some of Colorado's history through the medium of ghost towns. Tomorrow, we're finally going to attempt to climb Mt. Elbert. We're half-excited, half-dreading the attempt. Supposed to be very cold tomorrow morning. Stay tuned for the update.