Things to do / Travel Guide
The Colorado Rockies region isn't just home to the hippest, most up-to-date ski and snow scene - it also offers fabulous forays into the past. Pay your respects to Ute Chief Ouray and the ghosts of Colorado's abandoned gold mining towns, learn about the colorful characters of the South-Central Colorado town of Leadville's strike-it-rich silver story, and pick up a little local apple picking history at Cross Orchards - the Colorado Rockies region's historical attractions are as rich as they come.
Historical Attractions in Leadville, South-Central Colorado
Once the zenith of the wild west's rowdy, rags-to-riches, lusty, blustery mining history, in Leadville you don't have to dig and sift for the past the way the pioneers once did for gold and silver. Leadville's tale centers on the overnight wealth that resulted from sudden silver deposit discoveries (one silver vein was discovered by a grave-digger). Several decades later, almost as fast, the devaluation of silver left mines and hopes abandoned overnight. Today, remnants of this colorful strike-it-rich, strike-it-poor story can be found throughout Leadville. Museums and historic sites concerning the life story of postmaster-turned-millionaire (Leadville's first) H.A. Tabor abound. Visit Matchless Mine and Baby Doe's Cabin to learn about the strange biography of prominent citizen, recluse, and allegedly insane, Baby Doe Tabor, H.A. Tabor's second wife. The opulent 1879 Tabor Opera House that once hosted Harry Houdini and Oscar Wilde is open to the public for self-guided tours, and the Healy House and Dexter Cabin is an elaborately decorated rustic early-1900s pioneer-like cabin.
Native American Historic Sites in the Colorado Rockies
The Ute Chief Ouray is honored in two historic sites in the Rockies. The Ute Council Tree is not only a pretty impressive piece of nature, but the site of an important peace agreement. Visitors to Ouray Memorial Park Will learn about the chief and the Ute culture.
Ghost Towns in the Colorado Rockies
To get a mildly eerie introduction to the skeleton-structure remains of Colorado's mining towns, take a self-guided drive through some of the best-preserved ghost towns. These authentic towns, testimony to the fast boom-to-bust Colorado's gold mining history, will remind you of old classic Western films where shootouts and showdowns took place in dusty streets outside of saloons. This, however, is not Hollywood, but the real, bona fide thing. You can walk along rickety wooden sidewalks and peer into windows, and while the abandoned buildings are probably not actually spooked by old, disappointed miners, it is best not to enter them as many are structurally unsafe, privately owned, or protected by historical societies.
Here are a few accessible and well-preserved ghost towns you'll surely enjoy:
- Ashcroft, south of Aspen, is a well restored former silver mining town.
- St. Elmo, west of Buena Vista is preserved, rather than restored.
- Vicksburg , north of Buena Vista was never very big. Now there are about 10 buildings left.
- Animas Forks, northeast of Silverton, is a high altitude and very scenically located ghost town. Avalanches have contributed to the sorry state of the remaining buildings.
Historical Sites in Vail, Aspen, Telluride, Steamboat Springs and the Colorado Rockies
Historical-Sites
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