GRANITE

We were on our way for a visit to Buena Vista when we passed the signs for Granite and saw that it was more than just a roadside convenience store and gas station on the side of Highway 24. Across the Arkansas River was a grouping of homes and commercial buildings that surely indicated a town. Granite didn’t appear on any of our town lists, but this was an obvious site for exploration. Technically, Granite is an unincorporated community with its own US Post Office and zip code of 81228. Other than that, we didn’t know much about this small community. 

According to the 2010 Census, the official population of Granite is 116. Some reports indicate that the actual “permanent year-round” population is only 8 persons. Whatever the accurate number, it’s a far cry from the town’s boom days during the Pikes Peak Gold Rush of the mid-1870s when the population of this tiny metropolis peaked at some 7,000 souls. Granite was likely the only town in Colorado to be the county seat of two counties—both Lake and Chaffee. In those early days, mining celebrities like Horace Tabor (of Leadville fame) made Granite their temporary stopover on their way toward bigger riches further north on the Arkansas River.

The first Colorado gold rush of 1858-59, often referred to as the Pikes Peak Gold Rush due to the famous slogan ‘Pikes Peak or Bust”, was actually centered north Granite in the placer deposits of streams that fed the South Platte River. Discoveries further south, near Granite, came a few months after.  Near the headwaters of the Arkansas (17 miles north of Granite), gold was discovered near Oro City. Later in 1860, gold was found in Cache Creek, very near Granite, and before long, Granite boomed on the east side of the Arkansas into a mining camp of thousands. By the latter part of the decade, enough exploration had occurred on the hillside sources of the placers on Cache Creek and the Arkansas to justify the erection of a mill to process gold-bearing quartz ore, and in 1868, Granite became important enough that the county seat of Lake County was moved there from a now ghosted settlement called Dayton, near Twin Lakes.

County seats tended to move with the fortunes of gold and silver mining in those days, and as Colorado grew after statehood in 1876, more counties were added to the original 17. Granite lost out to the booming town of Leadville as the county seat of Lake County in 1878, but when the maps were redrawn in the same year, Granite succeeded in becoming the county seat of the newly-drawn Chaffee County—but only for a short time. Buena Vista, to the south, with a commanding percentage of eligible voters, claimed the county seat for itself in 1879. Not dissuaded by an election that Granite considered “fraudulent”, the citizens of Granite refused to give up the official records of the county. Buena Vista residents banded together in a vigilante expedition on November 12, 1880, and with a commandeered locomotive and flatcar, went to Granite under cover of darkness and forcibly removed documents, furniture, even the wood stove, from county headquarters and moved it lock-stock-and-barrel to Buena Vista.

Despite its downfall as a seat of county government, Granite continued to thrive for several years as placer deposits and limited hard-rock excavations continued to show decent returns to gold miners. Granite reached its peak population of about 7,000 in the early 1880s. Then, as the silver boom overtook gold as the driving force in the Colorado mineral belt, Granite took a decided back seat to Leadville, and even Buena Vista.

Granite was a principal stop along the Leadville Stagecoach Road which was established in 1877 and ran the 126 miles from Canyon City to Denver along the Arkansas. As transportation to and from Leadville became ever more important in the late 1870s, railroads competed to connect Leadville to smelters in Denver and coal resources in the south. The first to complete the rail line along the Arkansas, and through Granite, was the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad (D&RG). By July, 1880, Granite and Leadville were connected by rail to the outside world. Meanwhile, the Colorado Midland Railroad (CMRR), the first of the standard gauge railways built over the Continental Divide, ran its tracks through Granite and Leadville on their way to Aspen and Grand Junction in the mid-1880s. The Colorado Midland’s investment in standard gauge track, which allowed heavier freight loads, paid off. Until 1918, the CMRR dominated ore transport from the Leadville-Granite mining district. Rail transport continued to dominate Granite’s connection with the outside world through the first three decades of the twentieth century—and was the source of dramatic and tragic train wrecks that put railroad operators under increased scrutiny.

Granite’s population continued to decline during the Great Depression and through the Second World War. By the mid-1950s, the Granite School enrollment had dropped to only 13 students and the school was closed. Today, the town attracts whitewater rafting enthusiasts and hikers, as well as a few still-enthusiastic place gold panners. 

During our visit to Granite, we encountered a group of young locals who were some of those “year-round” residents. They appreciated our interest in Granite, but were unanimous in their appeal for us not to promote Granite too much to the outside world. They loved Granite just the way it was.

Still, a few residents were interested in profiting from the interest in the town as a means to escape. The original stage stop hotel in Granite was being offered for sale by Remax at $378,000. Built in 1858, this livery and hotel sat directly on County Road 397 and could boast such illustrious former guests as Doc Holliday. It was tempting, to be sure, but like gold panning, it carried lots of risk.

Montezuma nearly died, like a lot of other mining camps born in the silver boom of the 1880s, but it managed to survive through the mid-twentieth century and then got its second wind as a rustic, nearby and cheaper alternative to Keystone Ski Area and the Dillon/Frisco/Silverthorne complex nearby. Today, Montezuma boasts at least 75 full-time residents and perhaps double that number in part-timers—up from a paltry 17 people in 1960, just before the returning 10th Mountain Division veterans kicked off the ski boom in Summit and Eagle counties in the mid-sixties.

At 10,312 feet in elevation, Montezuma is not for the faint of heart. But it is a relatively easy drive up Montezuma Road (CR5) along the upper reaches of the Snake River from US6 in Keystone—perhaps 20 minutes from I-70 exit in Dillon. Denver and Colorado Springs residents who have inherited log homes from prior generations now spend most of their summers there. Out-of-staters are increasingly common, just as they are in the ski towns down the road. They have even become a source of controversy in local elections. 

The mayor brought legal action in 2014 to compel every legal resident to show up in the town hall after an election that appeared to have been swayed by a number of non-resident voters. The municipal election held in April 2014 was disputed after the fact by the county district attorney for alleged voter fraud by five second-home owners. The town had not held an election for its Board of Trustees since 1996 and all of the seats were up for grabs. The newly elected mayor, Lesley Davis, was apparently concerned about the balance of power on the Board shifting because of the five votes; even though the results of the election were not formally contested, as required, within the statutory timeframe for appeal of 17 days. The controversy seemed to boil down to a conflict between part-time residents and permanent residents as to who is qualified to vote. It is estimated that one-third of Montezuma’s residents are part time. Mayor Davis won her post by only 3 votes (5% of the eligible voters). When Montezuma was a mining camp, its entire population could have been considered out-of-towners, and no one paid a second thought to it. Today, non-residents are welcome for their interest, but held at arm’s length when it comes to politics. The newcomers are in many ways responsible for Montezuma’s survival, but they have also driven up local real estate prices to an extent that shuts out the local working class. 

According to the 2000 Census, median household income in Montezuma was $38,750, and the median family income was nearly $54,000—enough to ensure that nearly all residents lived above the poverty line. In fact, with a median per capitaincome of almost $32,000, Montezumans earned well above the Colorado per capita income average of $24,000 and the US average of $27,000. Montezuma is far better off that many small Colorado communities, probably reflective of its proximity to recreational wilderness and to major ski areas, making it attractive to well-off part time residents. 

The town was founded in 1865 following the discovery of silver in nearby Argentine Pass and was populated by prospectors coming to the area over Loveland Pass from Georgetown. By 1881, the town had its own newspaper (the Mill Run), 2 hotels, 3 stores, 3 saloons, 2 blacksmiths, 1 bootmaker and a number of restaurants and boarding houses. The town incorporated in 1882 opened its own post office soon thereafter (now zip code 80435 served by Dillon). By 1890, at the height of the Silver Boom, the town reportedly had 10,000 residents. A small smelter was in operation outside of Montezuma to separate silver and lead ores for several small mines and the larger Saints Johns Mining Company that operated several mines up CR275 on Saint John’s Creek.

As with several other Summit County mining camps, the overproduction of silver and the resulting impacts of the 1893 Sherman Silver Act wrought significant damage on the silver metal market and Montezuma went into a steep decline, going from a thriving camp of nearly 10,000 to a population of only 40 in 1900. The population increased again in 1910 with the resurgence of silver markets , but from that point to mid-century, the town pretty much saw a steady decline in population, reaching a low of 17 persons in the 1960 Census. Even with the growth of ski towns in Summit, Montezuma has struggled to reach a permanent population of 65 in the 2010 Census. It will be interesting to see what the 2020 Census shows.

As with other Colorado mining towns, fires were always a major threat to a town’s existence. There have been five major fires in the town in the last 80 years, and in the winter of 2014-2015, snowmelt wiped out Montezuma Road entirely, isolating the town for nearly a month. 

We made our last of several visits to Montezuma in July 2020 while biding our time in Colorado during the pandemic. The entrance to the town still boasts its entrance sign over the CR5 with a wooden sign “Montezuma 10,200 ft” on the background of an old mining ore cart, and to the right, an old WWII bomb casing with the word “SLOW” printed on it. The town’s street is mostly a dirt road and is littered with speedbumps in multiple rows and numerous signs warning that the speed limit in town is 5 mph.

Just past the town entry is quaint home with toilet flower pots, warnings about kids playing in the streets and a long white Cadillac limo with a ski rack attached. At the far end of town, on the road toward Webster Pass, a block stand--variously painted in graffiti and punctuated by unattended flowers--holds up an old ore crushing machine manufactured by Hendrie & Bolthoff of Denver, a testament to Montezuma’s mining past. The placard on the machine reads:

HENDRIE & BOLTHOFF

M’F’G & SUPPLY Co.

DENVER COLO

PAT’D MAY 18 1897

Charles Hendrie came to Colorado in 1959 looking for opportunities to generate business for his small manufacturing company, Hendrie Iron Works of Burlington, Iowa. He was not an experienced mining machinery maker, but used plans for machines built in California and began importing to Colorado miners from his plant in Burlington by mule train. With the market booming, he opened a new machine shop in Central City, on Eureka Street, in 1861. Charles eventually moved his sons and his Burlington plant manager, Henry Bolthoff, west to Central City to accommodate demand. The newly formed company, Henrdrie Brothers & Bolthoff, opened an office in Denver in 1876 (Denver had become a hub for mining supplies to places like Leadville because of the new rail lines), and moved their headquarters there in 1879. With more and more business originating in Denver, another mining equipment entrepreneur, Peter McFarlane, bought the Eureka Foundry from the Hendrie Brothers. As it turns out, Peter McFarlane is my great-great-grandfather. I spent the summers of my young days in Central City, living in Peter’s old home (then occupied by my great-aunt and Peter’s daughter, Yetta McFarlane) and scouring the hills around Central City for remnants of gold ore, among other playful pursuits.

Hendrie & Bolthoff continued to expand and diversify as Colorado grew, building electric power plants in Loveland and Longmont, and becoming a distributor of products made by Yale, RCA, Towne, Stanley and others. The distribution side of the business grew strongly, and by mid-century, Hendrie & Bolthoff had locations in 18 cities across five states, generating $16 million in sales. The company was acquired by Gulf & Western in 1961.[1]

Around the town we also saw fairly strange looking structures resembling some cross between bird feeders and mailboxes. Turns out that they are “goals” stationed around town to catch frisbees thrown in regular town games of frisbee golf. We would like to be around to see that happen some afternoon!

The old school house in town is on the National Register of Historic Places (Registration # 5375) and now exists as the town hall and a local museum. Just down the road, we stopped for a while to talk to Chris, who was diligently working on re-staining her cabin. She explained that the home was built in the 1880s, and then bought by her parents after the Second World War. Chris and her husband live and Denver, but spend their summers—very happily—in Montezuma. It is a familiar scenario for Summit County, whose full-time resident population is only 31,000, but who’s part-time and non-resident population is easily double that number; and where more than 7 million tourists visit each year, contributing over $1 billion to the local economy. Growth will continue to impact Montezuma, just as it will the rest of Summit County. The permanent population of Summit County will likely increase almost 15% by 2025; meaning that the total population (resident and non-resident) might actually increase by 15,000 persons – or nearly 50% of the current resident population in the next 5 years. Montezuma is likely to stay a small town, but it will increasingly become integrated into a metropolitan community of towns that start to resemble those of the front range population centers.

[1] Hendrie and Bolthoff [R. Keith Schrum, Colorado Historical Society, MSS #304, 1994]

Elizabeth and I have passed Silver Plume at least a hundred times on the journey up and down Interstate 70 from Silverthorne to Denver. You see the quaint railroad station and the nineteenth century locomotives and railcars of the Georgetown Loop to the south, and you might notice the old headframe of the old Pelican Mine on the north side of town—but it was hard to imagine any real, living, community could exist so close to the highway and barely a mile or two from the larger settlement in Georgetown to the east. But since Silver Plume ended up on our list of the 100 smallest towns in Colorado, it beckoned our visit in late August of the dry summer of 2020. 

Silver Plume is a statutory town of some 170 souls, located in Clear Creek County, a little less than 50 miles west of Denver. The sits at 9,175 ft in elevation along the side of Clear Creek as it plunges toward Georgetown at the confluence of tiny Cherokee Creek coming down from the high mountains to the north. A narrow gauge[1]railroad, called the Georgetown Loop, was completed in 1884 along the routes pioneered by railroad tycoon Jay Gould and his Union Pacific Railroad in the 1870s to connect Denver to the mining town of Idaho Springs. Gould wanted to extend his rail line on to Georgetown’s silver mines, and from there to the bonanza underway in Leadville, Colorado. Huge deposits of silver were found in Leadville in 1979, and the first railroad to make the Denver to Leadville connection was destined to make huge profits. Jacob Blickensderfer, UP’s chief engineer, devised an ingenious plan of loops, curves and bridges to complete the line from Georgetown to Leadville, and by 1884, the line to Sliver Plume was complete and the first trains were arriving at the Silver Plume depot. However, to continue on to Leadville westward over Loveland Pass and beyond would be both expensive and time-consuming. Meanwhile, the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad, founded Colorado Springs founder William Jackson Palmer, had had already acquired rights to a route along the Arkansas River from Pueblo to Leadville that would link those mines to its existing line from Denver via Pueblo. 

With the repeal of the Sherman Silver Act and the ensuing panic of 1893, mining activity slowed considerably in Clear Creek County, but tourist traffic began to pick up. Soon, the Georgetown Loop Railroad was running seven trains a day out of Denver for the $3 round-trip excursion to Georgetown. The excursions from Denver eventually fell victim to the development and popularity of the automobile, and the Denver route closed in 1938. Wartime demands for manpower depleted the mine workforce, and with it the demand for rail links in the Clear Creek gold and silver districts. The Georgetown Loop Railroad ceased operation in 1941. Over forty years later, with the help and cooperation of generous donors and the Colorado Historical Society, the Georgetown Loop Railroad was opened again in 1984 and has operated continuously since then to ferry tourists in and around the famed mining district.

At its peak in the 1880s, Silver Plume probably was home to at least 1,000 residents. The 1890 census shows an official population of 980. By 1900, however, the population had already declined to 775, and the town shrank by about half every census thereafter, reaching a nadir of 86 persons in 1960. Since then, Silver Plume has grown slowly as skiing, outdoor recreation and tourism began to rebuild mountain economies surrounding the town. Referred to as a “pretty village” by early historians[2], Silver Plume is certainly a pleasant town and one would hope it will continue to thrive as an artistic and cultural outpost at the entrance to Colorado high country.

We pulled into town mid-morning on a sunny August day. The George Rowe Museum Building gets your attention almost immediately, so we pulled in there and found Earl and his friends busy at work restoring a simple wooden building next to the museum. The Rowe Building is an impressive 2-story red brick Romanesque building designed by Denver architect William Quayle, and served as the town’s only school from 1894 to 1959. It now houses a fascinating look back at school and town life in the early years of the twentieth century.

Earl was more than willing to pass the time and tell us not just about the “hose company” building they were restoring, but a wealth of other stories about the town and its surrounding history. It is something we have found more often than not in these small Colorado towns—people with the time and courtesy to engage strangers. John Steinbeck found it this way by and large in his journey across the US in the early 1960s. He writes, in Travels with Charley – “Again my attitude may be informed by love, but it seemed to me that the towns were places to live in rather than nervous hives. People had time to pause in their occupations to undertake the passing art of neighborliness.” 

I have also found that as shy as Elizabeth is about initially engaging strangers, she far more likely to get a positive response from townspeople. Her smile is infectious, and her style is pure magic. People (and need I say it, men especially) open up right away. I can take the cue and go from there with my stories about fathers, grandfathers and great-great grandfathers in Colorado, but the opening is always better with Elizabeth and her camera.

Earl was more than ready for us. Not only was he a fountain of information on the hose company traditions of the mining towns, he was also a docent at the Georgetown Energy Museum (which was new to me), and a general town historian as well. We hit the jackpot with Earl.

Fire was an ever-present danger in the mining towns of the late 1800s and early 1900s. Central City burned down in 1874 and Silver Plume in 1884. Cripple Creek burned in 1896 and Denver suffered a severe fire in 1906. If a fire broke out, it was up to volunteers to get the hoses and pumps up rugged roads and narrow paths. Generally, there wasn’t time, money or space to maintain a fleet of wagons drawn by horses or mules. Georgetown didn’t get its first motorized fire engine until 1950. The more reliable way was to fight fires with a team of man-drawn hose carts. Hence, every mining town had its “Hose Company”, and inevitably, town pride and competitiveness led to racing. Georgetown was the first mountain town to have its own hose company. They were called to fight the great Central City fire of 1874—in itself a feat because it would have been a rugged trek over 20 miles of mountain roads from Georgetown to Central City. I am surprised they made it in time. This regional pride led Georgetown to begin to sponsor and annual competition for Hose Companies from around Colorado that survive to this day. Hose Company teams have to race to a location and then unreel a hose about 700 feet. The record of 28.4 seconds (remarkable, when you think of it) is still held by Georgetown. As Earl proudly recounted the hose company history, his colleagues (all retired gentlemen in their 70s, I surmise) went about the painting, re-shingling and repair of the old Silver Plume Hose Company building which would house two old hose carts and historical photos and displays of what Earl so graciously spoke of.

Earl told us that the 1894 fire started at “Paddy’s Bar” are the far east end of Main Street when a couple of kerosene lanterns spilled over (possibly from a tipsy patron’s stumble?). A gusty wind from the canyon to the east roared up Main Street, pushing the flames westward and rapidly engulfing the town. However, just as the fire reached out to touch the Catholic Church, the wind miraculously shifted 180°, and pushed the inferno back to the west and into extinction, saving the Church and the rest of town. The local priest, via the Bishop and Cardinal, informed the Pope of the apparent miracle. The Pope commissioned two new carved olive wood doors to be sent to the Silver Plume church in recognition of the event. The doors still stand in place. 

Silver Plume was founded around 1870 when Stephen Decatur, editor of Georgetown’s Colorado Miner magazine, suggested creating a town name for the mining camp that had grown up around the Silver Plume Mine. The mine had been named for the feathery streaks of “native” silver that occurred in the first ore from the property. Decatur was asked his opinion about a name for the new town, and quickly responded with the following five lines of a christening poem:

The knights today are miners bold,

Who toil in deep mines’ gloom!

To honor men who dig for gold,

For ladies whom their arms enfold,

We’ll name the camp Silver Plume!

The name was officially given to the US Post Office in town on December 1, 1875, and became the official name when the settlement became a statutory town in January 1896. 

Earl went on to tell us about the prominence of Georgetown and Silver Plume not only in fire brigades, but in the provision of newly popular electric power to the mining districts of Clear Creek and Gilpin counties. Because of its proximity to the high head and fast-moving waters of Clear Creek and its tributaries, Georgetown soon became a center of electric power generation in the area. Mines were increasingly drawn to the new-fangled source of power and light—more reliable and considerably safer than gas—but technically more sophisticated. The first generators were installed using designs proposed by Nikola Tesla[3] in 1891, and the United Light & Power Company of Clear Creek continued to grow, eventually supplying electric power to Idaho Springs, Central City and Blackhawk. United installed its first two Edison (GE) generators, powered by Pelton hydraulic turbines, in 1906. The company was eventually merged together with several other local electric utilities and became what was known for most of the century as Public Service of Colorado, now Xcel Energy. 

Earl is a proud docent of the Georgetown Energy Museum, well worth a visit next time we are there.

At the turn of the century, Silver Plume was home to nearly 50 families living in about 90 households in town. The town consisted of 134 housing units. Like many mountain towns, Silver Plume is overwhelmingly white (94%), although Hispanics make up almost 10% of the population. About one-quarter of the population was under the age of 18, and would attend schools in nearby Georgetown. There are about 30% more men than women in town, but despite meeting some of the senior citizens that day in August, the town reports only a few percent of its population over the age of 65.

The median household income was a bit over $35,000 per year, and median family income a bit higher at nearly $42,000. While income still ranks below Colorado as a whole, folks in Silver Plume are certainly better off than those in the small plains towns of southeast Colorado. Still, it means that one-fourth of the population is actually below the poverty line—a statistic that is sadly familiar in most of Colorado’s small towns.

[1]Narrow gauge refers to track widths less than the standard width of 4’ 8 ½” that were developed as a much less expensive means of building rail lines in remote or mountainous terrain. The width of the Georgetown Look Railroad tracks is about 3 feet.

[2] The WPA Guide to 1930s Colorado, Tour 1, p. 205, University of Kansas Press, 1987.

[3] Nikola Tesla, the Croatian genius who was a rival to Thomas Edison, is credited with discovery and development of the alternating current (AC) motor and generator that would eventually displace Edison’s direct current (DC) technology because of its superior transmission capability and safety. Tesla famously selected Colorado Springs for his Tesla Experimental Station in 1899, though it was a commercial failure and Tesla abandoned it in 1904.

We drove up to Tincup this summer the usual way that most folks get there, over from Highway 24 out of Buena Vista and over Cottonwood Pass to Taylor Reservoir. We drove past the multitude of ATVers who have made this part of Colorado their own, and finally through the quieter forest road south of Taylor Park and into the still relatively quiet environs of old Virginia City. When the town was incorporated in 1880, they named it Virginia City, even though the settlement had been long been known as Tin Cup Camp. Story has it that the prospector Jim Taylor had returned with his placer gold fines from up on Willow Creek in a “tin cup”, and decided to name the valley “Tin Cup Gulch” in 1859. The town saw a hiatus in exploration during the Civil War years, but in 1878, a gold lode was found as the source of Willow Creek placer, and gold-seekers came in earnest. By 1880, the camp accommodated nearly 1,500 prospectors, saloon keepers, blacksmiths and hoteliers; so, the town fathers felt obliged to select a name for the town that reflected greater authority than “Tin Cup”—hence the decision to call it Virginia City, despite the fact that older, more established Virginia Cities existed in Nevada, California and Montana. The US postal service, tire of confusion in mail deliveries, actually changed the name of the post office to Tincup in 1881, and the town council begrudgingly followed suit in 1882.

As it turns out, the name was a quaint and effective moniker. It is hard to forget, and more than one smart marketing gambit has been launched on the name. The latest is “Tincup Whiskey”, one of the many craft bourbons looking to capitalize on “Old West” charms and legend. Bottled in Denver, with elevation 5,251 feet proudly emblazoned on the bottle, Tincup Whiskey notes that although it is mostly “high-rye” whiskey distilled and aged in the flatlands of Indiana, it is spiked with Colorado single malt and cut with Rocky Mountain water. The whiskey is named for the Colorado mining pioneers who drank their whiskey from tin cups—but I can only think of the great little town of Tincup when I see their product. The other memory that stirs every time I hear “Tincup” is a time in the late 1950s and early 1960s when I used to get up early with my father every day to listen to Pete Smythe’s General Store—a morning radio program on Denver’s KOA station that ran for 18 years between 1951 and 1969.  A true Garrison Keillor before Garrison and Lake Woebegone were known, Pete created a wonderful fictional universe based on the small imaginary town of East Tincup (that I, and perhaps many others, actually thought was a small town just east of the real Tincup high in the mountains of Colorado). Dad and I listened for hours to the banter between Pete and Elmy Elrod, Moat Watkins and Rocky Head (all Pete’s voices in disguise), interspersed by the daily farm market reports, the weather and commentaries on the news. When I think of Tincup, I think of those warm early mornings around the kitchen table—my Dad with his black coffee and me with my milk and Cheerios—sharing a piece of the old mountain west.[1]

Near the center of town is the town hall, built in 1903. The hall survived two major fires—in 1906 and 1913—that destroyed large parts of Tincup, and now serves not only as town hall, but as a quasi-museum and as a community church on summer Sundays. Like several other former mining camps in the central mountains (like Montezuma, for example), Tincup consists of a mix of original log structures from the 1880s and some newer but not so new structures from the mid-1900s, that have been passed down from generation to generation and serve a population that is primarily seasonal. At 10,157 feet in elevation, it joins a select few mountain towns above 10,000 feet, and as such, is hardly a pleasant place to be in the middle of winter. But in the summer, the town boasts a seasonal population of several hundred from around Colorado who come to enjoy the mountain air, scenery and recreation. There are a couple of functioning restaurants, one general store and no hotels now in Tincup—but there are plenty of accommodations for tourists down the road in Taylor Park. Most places are not for sale, but for someone looking for a summer residence in Tincup, a half million dollars would not be an unusual asking price for a 2,000 square foot residence.

Just south of town is the quaint local “Boothill” cemetery. The cemetery rambles among a forested area near a large pond and boasts headstones (and wooden markers) that date back more than a century—with separate Jewish and Catholic sections as was the custom in those days. It’s layout—more a part of the forest than separate from it—is one of the most unusual we have seen.

Tincup fell into disrepair following the bust in silver prices in the 1890s, but a new discover of gold nearby led to a resurgence from 1896 to 1907 (same as the Cripple Creek boom), and then a long decline that eventually forced the local post office to close in 1918. The population of Tincup had declined to around 75 persons by 1920. Most of the historic storefront buildings that recalled its halcyon days had burned down in 1913 and were never rebuilt. It’s possible that the slight resurgence the town has seen since the 1960s was a direct result of the nostalgia created by Pete Smythe’s imaginary “East Tincup” as Denverites took more and more to the mountains for a respite from the booming city growing on the front range.

If you drive south out of Tincup on SR765, you will go through the towns of Pitkin, Ohio City and Parlin before you reach the main line of US50 running between Canon City and Gunnison. We will go that way someday, since the town of Pitkin (population 66) is on our list of smallest Colorado towns. The other road out of town to the west is north, back through Taylor Park and around Taylor Reservoir toward Almont, the nearest real “town” and on a picturesque drive along the Taylor River on SH135 to Gunnison. For the adventurous, jeep roads take you east from the center of Tincup (CR267) to Mirror Lake and the famous ghost town of St Elmo nearly all the way to the Continental Divide. I can remember traveling those roads with my Dad in an old Ford Bronco when I was about 8 years old. My Dad was a fearless 4-wheeler. Good thing we didn’t realize how crazy it was when we were so young. 

[1]Pete Smythe was born in Glenrock, Wyoming in 1911 and died in Littleton, Colorado in 2000 at the age of 88. He went to the University of Colorado, started his own dance band, and graduated with a business degree in 1934. For the next 7 years, he toured with his band. In 1941, he joined KMYR as a disc jockey, and in 1946 spent time in California writing shows for legends like Bing Crosby and Edgar Bergen. In 1948 he returned to Denver and in 1951 launched his famous “Pete Smythe’s General Store” show on KOA radio in 1951. 

We left Ward on a late November afternoon—the sun still shining—and made our way on the famous Peak-to-Peak Highway, Colorado State Highway 72, south toward Nederland. Highway 72 cuts a scenic north-south pass right through one of Colorado’s most famous gold mining areas—from Raymond on the north, passing near Jamestown, Gold Hill, Ward, Nederland, Rollinsville and ending in Blackhawk and Central City. The mines have played out, but the scenery is a spectacular example of what makes Colorado the special place that it is.

At Nederland, we cut straight west into the higher mountains on the Happy Valley Road (County Road 130) toward the town of Eldora, population 142. Perhaps best-known today for the small traditional Ski Eldora resort near town, Eldora was once a booming mining town of some 1,500 residents in the late 1800s. Gold was discovered near Eldora in 1875, but the economy of the town was primarily based on its fortuitous location as a supply and shipping center for the mines of the Middle Park and further west and the growing city of Denver. Eldora sits only about 5 miles from the continental divide in a small valley surrounded by the Buckeye, Eldora, Klondike and Mineral peaks. It was the closest rail and road connector to the famous Caribou Mine where gold and silver were discovered in 1861 by a prospector named Conger. While his discovery was based on placer gold, the real richness of Caribou was revealed in the lode silver deposits discovered later. The mine was sold in 1871 to Dutch investors, who were disappointed in the returns, and then to Denver entrepreneurs Jerome Chaffee and David Moffat. The mine prospered under their ownership and their shrewd access to New York capital. By 1875, it was estimated that 3,000 people lived and worked in Caribou. A fire in 1879 destroyed the town, and by the 1920s, Caribou had only 50 people—and despite attempts in the 1980s by various entrepreneurs to restart mining, Caribou is a ghost town today.

The one successful modern venture in the Caribou district had nothing to do with silver—but instead with “platinum” music albums, so to speak. In 1971, music producer Jim Guercio acquired the 4,000-acre Caribou Ranch and renovated a barn on the property into a modern recording studio. From 1972 to 1985, Guercio hosted such names as Joe Walsh, Elton John, Dan Fogelberg, Chicago, and the Beach Boys at Caribou Ranch and made it a major force in the recording industry. A fire damaged the studio beyond repair in 1985, and Guercio ended up selling the ranch to, among others, the Walton Family. Jim has since purchased and refurbished the famous OW Ranch in Sheridan, Wyoming, where we caught up with him last summer to discuss a photo project for the all-women wranglers who work the ranch each spring.

Eldora was originally known as “Happy Valley” for the Happy Valley placer discovery by prospector John Kemp. Later, the town adopted the name “Eldorado” (City of Gold), but like its fellow gold mining town Tincup[1], mail was persistently misdirected to the more famous Eldorado, California. The town fathers decided to shorten the name to “Eldora” to avoid the confusion. Eldora still has no permanent post office.

Eldora is, however, has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1989. It is a quaint and peaceful small town, with plenty of well-kept residences and at least one viable hotel. Despite a fire in 1899 that destroyed the forests surrounding Eldora and ruining its timber industry base, it has managed to maintain a fairly steady population since 2000, whose residents live to enjoy the cool summers at 9,403 feet in elevation. For those year-round residents, however, the winters can be grueling. Eldora averages 300 inches of snowfall annually—making Eldora one of the snowiest of Colorado resorts, but also making travel around the town of Eldora and into Boulder a bit treacherous at times.

[1]Tincup’s original name was “Virginia City”. After years of enduring misrouted mail going the more famous Virginia City, Nevada, Tincup’s residents decided to adopt the new and unique name.

It is sometimes hard to believe that some of the richest former mining towns in Colorado are just miles west of the sophisticated and progressive neighborhoods of Boulder, home to the University of Colorado and to a burgeoning high technology universe of companies, venture funds and startups. Old Colorado and New Colorado separated by less than 20 miles of canyon roads.

The most direct route to Ward is a charming road up Left Hand Canyon (named after the Arapahoe Chief “Left Hand” [1]). Ward itself seems precariously perched on the mountainsides that surround the townsite. It was once the richest town in Colorado and probably home to thousands of miners seeking their fortunes near the Gold Hill discoveries nearby. Although places like Idaho Springs make their claims to have been the home of the first discoveries of gold around Gregory Gulch, the first discovery of lode gold[2]was actually in Gold Hill. As such, the Gold Hill district was accorded status as “Mining District #1” by the territorial government, and preceded lode discoveries in Gilpin and Clear Creek counties by about 3 months.  As with other places in Colorado, while gold first attracted prospectors, silver was actually the source of bigger fortunes. It is estimated that two million ounces of silver were extracted from the areas around Ward before the mines were largely deserted during World War I.

The Town of Ward is a home rule municipality founded in 1860 and named for a local prospector, Calvin Ward. The town got its own post office in 1863 (current zip code 80481) and was incorporated in 1896. The railroad reached Ward in 1898 when the official population was around 400. A fire in 1900 destroyed over 50 buildings in town, and so began the long decline in population and economic activity. From a census estimate of 300 residents at the beginning of 1900, Ward’s population shrank with each decennial census to an official count of 9 persons in 1960.[3]

Then began the “hippie revival” that restored this quaint and quirky town to a permanent population of around 150 persons (as of the 2010 census). Even the town website lauds its character and residents as:

Recluses, misfits, strong and quarrelsome, but also kind. Opinionated, artistic and onery.

About 36 families call Ward home these days, in about 82 households that are 98.8% white. Surprisingly, only 8% of the population is over 65—an anomaly in most Colorado small towns—so it is a young and “hip” crowd that has repopulated the town. There is no one living below the poverty line—also a relative anomaly in small towns—and the median household income is a relatively healthy $33,750 per year. At 9,450 feet in elevation, Ward gets it share of tough winter weather, made even more challenging by the town’s highly vertical layout. 

[1] The front range of the Colorado Rockies from Wyoming south was inhabited by the southern Arapahoe Tribe. Leading that tribe in the mid-1800s was Chief Niwot, meaning Chief “Left Hand”. Niwot encouraged a peaceful co-existence with the growing crowds of prospectors and miners coming to the Boulder Valley after gold was discovered in 1858. Niwot learned English, Cheyenne and Sioux languages to try to help facilitate peaceful relations among these competing interests. However, increasing tensions between Native Americans and white settlers, fueled by the 1862 Sioux uprising and the Hungate family incident in 1864, led Territorial Governor John Evans to implicate all tribes as threats to “civil order”, and ordered the relocation of the Arapahoe and Cheyenne tribes to the area around Sand Creek, just north of Fort Lupton. Evans ordered the 3rd Colorado Cavalry led by Colonel John Chivington to patrol the Sand Creek area and maintain order.  Without provocation, in the early morning hours of November 29, 1864, Chivington and his men attacked and massacred hundreds of Native American men, women and children as they slept—Chief Niwot among them. Niwot is remembered for a statement attributed to him called the “Left Hand Curse”—People seeing the beauty of this valley will want to stay, and their staying will be the undoing of the beauty.

[2]Early gold discoveries in the west were almost always in placer deposits along mountain streambeds where gold flakes were eroded from some unseen source and swept downstream. While placer deposits were easy to work, requiring a minimum of tools and effort, they played out quickly and were not fortune-makers. The real prize was to find the veins, or lode deposits of gold-bearing ore that would require tunneling, crushing and separation, but which could yield great fortunes over longer-periods of time.

[3] According to local records, Ward had only 4 full-time residents during the Second World War.

As you move south along the Peak-to-Peak Highway (Colorado State Highway 72) you come to a point where it breaks off east toward Eldorado Springs, Westminster, Arvada and metropolitan Denver. Just over the line from Boulder into Gilpin county, the southern route becomes Colorado State Highway 119, and it is that road, which roughly starts at Rollinsville, that continues on to the gold country of Gilpin and Clear Creek—the historic towns of Central City, Blackhawk and Idaho Springs.

Little Rollinsville could easily be dismissed along this road, but it has a history and importance all its own. Named for the Gilpin County mining executive, John Q.A. (Quincy Adams) Rollins, Rollinsville was the historic rail connection between these upper Gilpin and lower Boulder counties and the industrial supply lines of Denver. It was also the entrance to historic Rollins Pass, a National Historic Place, that provided one of the first rail routes over the continental divide between Denver and Winter Park. John Rollins established the old Indian pass as a wagon toll road in 1873. Rollins’ toll road, known as the “Middle Park and South Boulder Wagon Road Company”, was used heavily by settlers, ranchers and miners throughout the latter part of the 19th century. Simultaneously, various railroading ventures attempted to lay track and build tunnels along the Rollins Pass route, mostly unsuccessfully, until David Moffat, a Denver banker, founded his Denver, Northwestern & Pacific Railway (DN&PRW) in 1902 and began surveys and construction for a rail line directly west from Denver, over the continental divide and on to Salt Lake City. Construction began in 1903 and the rail line from Denver to Craig was completed around 1905. The DN&PRW never got beyond Craig. 

The rail line was a treacherous passage from about 8,600 feet in elevation at Rollinsville to a summit of over 11,600 feet at the rail stop named Corona. There were numerous switchbacks, curves and small tunnels to be negotiated; and runaways and accidents were not uncommon. The trip from Denver to Winter Park normally took 3 hours.

Today, Rollinsville depends more on tourist traffic from Highway 119 than on rail commuters. The population in 2010 was 181, and the Rollinsville post office (zip code 80474) has been in existence since 1871. Rollinsville is an unincorporated census