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 - the Colorado Rockies region's historical attractions are as rich as they come.
Cross Orchards Historic Site, Northwest Colorado
Everyone knows that an apple a day keeps the doctor away, but how many people know the history of apple orchards and harvesting techniques? Once one of the largest orchards in the country, at Cross Orchards Historic Site, near Grand Junction, you can wander amidst nearly 245 acres encompassing over 20,000 apple trees, operating since the late 1890s. After learning about apple planting and harvesting, touring the orchard, and taking a sweet, crunchy bite into the season's pick, you can wander through the site's historical offerings: wagons, tools, and equipment from the early-1900s, cars and a reconstructed trestle from an early-20th century train, and old-fashioned photos and farm records from the turn of the 20th century.
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.
The Ute Council Tree, Southwest Colorado
Pay tribute to the Colorado Rockies' tree with the highest stature. The Ute Council Tree, in Delta, is an official Colorado Landmark and was included in the book “Famous and Historic Trees of the United States.” It is the official meeting site at which Ute Chief Ouray and his wife Chipeta made a peace agreement with the area's white settlers. Not only is the tree's reputation big, the bicentennial cottonwood itself (having first sprouted in 1805) is 85 feet tall and seven feet in diameter.
Ouray Memorial Park, Southwest Colorado
No trip to the Colorado Rockies is complete unless you've paid your respects to the land's first inhabitants. At the Ouray Memorial Park, located in Montrose, you can walk the land that Ute Chief Ouray himself once farmed, visit a monument to Ouray and the grave of his wife, Chipeta, and stop into a small museum with information about the Ute culture, their ceremonial artifacts, and history.
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, 10 miles south of Aspen, in Northwest Colorado was once a large town with two newspapers, 20 saloons, many private homes, and a school. During the town's mining days, small mines, excavated by one or two men, surrounded Ashcroft. The largest of these mines was Montezuma Mine, about 10 miles southwest of Ashcroft. The mine yielded top-quality silver ore but sat too high on the mountain, making transportation costs exorbitant. Eventually the mine shut down. Nine buildings and an outhouse survived the mining bust. On the site now are a mixture of original and unoriginal buildings (transplanted from other ghost towns as replicas of the original), many of which have been extensively restored. Set amidst beautiful alpine scenery, you can peer into the windows of a blacksmith's shop, a mercantile store, hotel, several saloons, and cabins.
St. Elmo, west of Buena Vista in South-Central Colorado, is one of Colorado's best-preserved ghost towns, with 24 buildings, a courthouse, a general store, a church, schoolhouse, a unique, two-story outhouse, and a post office, many of which date back to around 1880. When the tiny town grew to a population of 2,000 (comprised mostly of single men), it gained a reputation for its saloons, dance halls, and all-around rowdy atmosphere. The lucrative million-dollar Mary Murphy gold mine, nearby, closed in 1926, leading to the town's decline. Unlike many other ghost towns, St. Elmo's buildings have been carefully preserved but not restored. Thus, visitors get a sense of the town that once was, as well as the way that weather and time have taken their tolls on the buildings. Keep your eye out for an area called Chipmunk Crossing, a little spot of land around some weedy railroad ties - visitors to the ghost town often enjoy feeding the people-savvy local chipmunks with sunflower seeds purchased at St. Elmo's general store for less than a dollar.
Just north of Buena Vista, stop at Vicksburg, also in South-Central Colorado, which was once home to a large number of cabins, two hotels, a school, two billiard halls, and a general store. The town's post office was in operation for only four years. In its short golden era, during the late 1800s, Vicksburg had about 500 residents. Today, nestled amidst spindly aspen groves and overgrown groundcover, a few buildings remain, including 10 cabins and an on-site museum. You will also see old-fashioned machinery (including the original tram drum from the nearby Fortune Mine), a rickety outhouse, what were once horse-drawn buggies, and the small Vicksburg cemetery.
The beginning of Animas Forks, northeast of Silverton, in Southwest Colorado, was hardly humble. When the mining camp started around 1877, it publicized itself as the “largest city in the world” (and in small print: “at this altitude”). Nestled high in the mountains at about 11,300 feet, Animas Forks is recommended as much for its scenery as for its history. Surrounded by breathtaking mountain peaks in calm, rolling pastures, you can walk around and explore the town of mining shacks and dilapidated cabins. With approximately seven silver-bearing gray copper mines located nearby, Animas Forks had its heyday from 1870-1880, but didn't manage to survive into the 1900s. The town once contained several stores, saloons, shops, and a hotel, among other buildings. Plagued by its mountainous surroundings, however, the town frequently suffered avalanches. Still, quite a few buildings remain, though many are in poor condition. While you can get to Animas Forks by car, a four-wheel-drive (4WD) vehicle will allow you to enter the town from Engineer Pass or Cinammon Pass for an excellent off-road adventure.
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