The Dumont boarding house in North Empire, unique for its ground-level
dormer windows, was built about 1872 for miners working on the Benton
lode, owned by John M. Dumont. In 1897, with a date still on the wall,
it was bought by a Mrs. Bishop who painted the building a purplish blue.
She operated it as a boarding house until about 1906 when she took over
the Peck House (Hotel Splendide) in Empire. Still later, in the 1930’s,
Waldemar Nelson lived in the “Blue House” and used one section as a
machine shop. A forge was still there in 1960. Photo by Dan Peterson.
_UNIQUE_
GHOST TOWNS
and
MOUNTAIN SPOTS
by
CAROLINE BANCROFT
_Assisted
by_
DANIEL K. PETERSON
(Cartographer and Photographer)
_Illustrated_
Johnson Publishing Company
Boulder, Colorado
1967
_Personal to the reader_
I love the high country of Colorado—and in a less effusive manner, so
does Dan Peterson. Partly for your enjoyment and partly for our own,
this booklet represents the crystallization of our mutual enthusiasms.
We hope that it will serve as a useful guide for you and others who
thrill to the heights and diverse grandeur of our Colorado Rockies.
But first, a word of warning: if after reading this booklet, you add one
act of vandalism, or carelessly cast one burning cigarette to the winds,
or messily leave a beer can in a crystal creek bed, the whole purpose of
our publication has been defeated. We have written about ghost towns out
of love of their dramatic past and a reverence for their present
fragility. If you follow in our footsteps to these mountain spots, we
entreat you to go in the same spirit.
When I said this booklet represented a “crystallization” of our mutual
enthusiasms, I could not have spoken more truly. Dan is still “hurting,”
as he phrases it, because Gladstone, his favorite ghost town, had to be
left out due to limitations of space. In order to appease his hurt, I
have agreed that he can sneak in its location on the Silverton map and a
short paragraph of description in the text.
And what have I had to sacrifice? Too many pets, such as Beartown,
reminder of the brave history of Stony and Hunchback Passes; Mineral
Point and its lonely sentinel, the San Juan Chief shaft house still
perched across a fork of Poughkeepsie Gulch and seen as one jeeps up to
thrilling Engineer Pass, and Mayday, where I have never been but am
intrigued by its romantic sound.
Our booklet does offer you forty-two “ghost towns” in photograph and
story, plus passing mention on a map or in the text of a few others.
These forty-two are reached from twenty-two attractive mountain towns
where it is possible to obtain good accommodations. All but three of our
final choices may be visited by ordinary car. For Lulu City, you will
have to walk a three-mile trail or ride a horse; for Bachelor, you may
take your car most of the way but will have to walk the last mile or
jeep the whole distance, and for Carson, you will have to go by jeep or
horse from Lake City. For the most part our forty-two towns are easy to
see and in their separate ways unique.
Here, another word of warning: there are almost no ghost towns any more.
In the true sense of the word they are gone. If you had been able to
ride a horse or were willing to punish your Model T Ford, I could have
taken you in the 1920’s to dozens of true ghost towns no farther away
than along the Front Range. Even in the late 1940’s, when jeeps first
came in, I could still have guided you to many true ghost towns. But no
more.
What has happened? Tourists (a mixed blessing) and natives who have no
regard for Colorado’s appealing past, have stolen from them, vandalized
them, destroyed buildings, and carted whole towns away. Another killer
in the form of fierce high-country winters has levelled them under tons
of heavy white snow or pulled them apart with snatching, tearing wind.
Whether desecrated by humans or eroded by nature, I am constantly
reminded of Charles Kingsley’s lines, painted on the Tabor Grand Theatre
curtain:
_So fleet the works of men, back to the earth again,_
_Ancient and holy things fade like a dream._
In other cases the ghost towns have undergone a metamorphosis. Some
settlements have changed into summer resorts because of the charm of
their buildings or the picturesqueness of their settings. Sometimes
their ghost town status was lost by a new industry moving in, such as
the sawmill at Lenado; or a new motor road has been strategically built,
such as the Peak-to-Peak Highway which redeemed Ward. These towns,
although peopled only by ghosts for many years, once again throb with
life today. Many of the summer-resort group are alive only in the warm
months. When the aspens have lost their fluttering gold in the autumn,
they return to ghost towns.
We have included some of each type. All were true ghost towns once, and
all had ghostly reminders still extant in 1960. But if you, as you visit
them, should fail to leave everything as you find it, there will soon be
nothing left for anyone to see. A sad and forlorn example of what can
happen in only a short time is the formerly beautiful Lee House at
Capitol City. When I first saw it in 1955, the house was still a true
mansion, and its atmosphere eerily evoked the great and pretentious
dreams of its builder. But in 1960 despoiling tourists had changed it to
a horrid ruin.
So go forth in the true spirit of adventure to see and to enjoy, and may
this little book add to your enjoyment!
A plan for touring the whole state and a large folded-in map of Colorado
serve as introduction to the special towns and separate tours that
follow. On the large map, the towns suggested for starting points are
shown as black dots and are numbered to correspond with the numbers of
the individual tours. The ghost towns appear as red dots. On the smaller
maps the starting points are shown as squares, and the ghost towns as
solid circles. Dan has drawn them all with the double purpose of being
accurate and helpfully clear.
But however clear the plan and maps, real enjoyment in visiting these
sites can only be had if the viewer has adequate knowledge of the people
who built these towns and the times they lived in. Before setting out on
the trips recommended here, some general knowledge of the state’s
history is a _must_. To this end no quicker method exists than a reading
of _Colorful Colorado_, a good companion volume.
The photographs, employed throughout the present booklet as
illustrations, carry credit lines which should be plain to all except
where initials have been used. DKP stands for Daniel K. Peterson; CHS,
for Colorado Historical Society, and DPL, for the Western History
Collection of the Denver Public Library.
My own part in the production of this work needs no explanation. My
first visit to a ghost town was in 1904 when, as a toddler, I was
carried on horseback by my father to Alice (then a thriving little
spot). Alice was my father’s headquarters for building a reservoir
system from five high mountain lakes that emptied into a sixth. These
lakes (one, _Lake Caroline_) lie some four to six miles beyond Alice.
Since that distant day I have never ceased to travel to Colorado’s
mountain towns, and I frequently describe myself as a “hillbilly.” No
matter where I have been, it has always been the mountains of faraway
lands that have had the greatest drawing power for me—the Jotunheim
range of Norway, the Highlands of Scotland, the Alps in France and
Switzerland, the Apennines in Italy and the Himalayas in India.
Yes, I can say along with Keats:
_Much have I travelled in the realms of gold,_
_And many goodly state and kingdoms seen...._
* * *
Yet none speaks so well of romance untold
As our high ghostly towns, still and serene.