There are more dead
towns in Colorado than there are alive ones. There are hundreds
of ghost towns-- either preserved or undiscovered
throughout Colorado. Prospectors went where the
gold was, or the silver. And these weren't places where
towns were supposed to be. But it sure is beautiful,
so you can't blame them for wanting to live there. And they often work really
hard and really fast to try to be a respectable town. You could see civilization
was taking hold. These are the origin stories
of settlement and civilization in Colorado. This program was generously
made possible by the History Colorado State Historical Fund. Supporting projects
throughout the state to preserve, protect,
and interpret Colorado's architectural
and archeological treasures. History Colorado
State Historical Fund. Create the future. Honor the past. With support from the
Denver Public Library, History Colorado and
the Colorado Office of Film, Television and Media. With additional
support from these fine organizations and
viewers like you. Thank you. [music playing] A ghost town in the interior
west, including Colorado, is a place where a lot of
people arrived, started building things, had ambitions,
and they often work really hard and
really fast to try to be a respectable town. And then with all that effort
and aspiration, it didn't work. There are approximately 400
ghost towns in Colorado-- some of which only
lasted a few weeks. But you can find the remnants
of these communities, these remnants of
hopes and dreams all through the Rocky Mountains. As Colorado became
a state in 1876, mining gold, silver,
coal, lead, tin, copper-- that was our industry. And towns popped up
throughout the West, as this area was opened
up from being native lands right on up until 1880. At that point, the whole
Western Slope of Colorado became available for
miners, and ranchers, pioneers to come out in
Homestead and also state claims. Prospectors went
where the gold was. That was usually in some
remote mountain canyon, so boomtowns, mining boomtowns,
literally sprang up overnight, in what might be a remote
pine forest or a gully. And these were places where
towns were supposed to be. These towns would be
sloped or terraced. Mining boom towns were
very much a product of this idea of get
rich and get out. When the towns flashed
up into existence, they were very quickly thrown
together-- log cabins and even tents with dirt floors. Most of towns burned
in some way or another. Ghost town aficionados
talk about three phases of a ghost town. The first phase is
when it's a tent city. You have a city of canvas
and it [inaudible].. The second phase
only takes place if the mineral resources
are good enough to sustain the town. And after a while, if
you can get enough people into the town, you
can build a sawmill. And you start building a
timber and frame community. You begin to see the false
fretted buildings replacing the log cabins or the tents. Very often, that's
the point where the town had its big fire. Right? When you build this
wooden town that was very susceptible to burning
down, the third phase of a town is a brick and stone community. And if you can survive long
enough to reach that phase, those are the towns which tend
to have the most permanence. Then mining industry
in the west really increased the
likelihood of people racing into incredibly remote,
incredibly difficult to get to areas, creating towns-- For any of these reasons,
the towns might decline. And once that
happens, people simply move elsewhere in search
of new opportunities. What's left behind? Well, abandoned
buildings, that are exposed to rain
and snow and wind, are susceptible
to relic hunters. And so these towns are sort
of pulled apart by weather, by natural and human forces,
until there may be nothing left except for remnant
spots of berry bushes where people have their gardens. Doctor and California
49ers Abner Ellis Wright was the first prospector
to set his sights on what later became St. Elmo. As legend has it, Wright
was attacked by a bear during his journeys out west. The doctor brought the animal
to the ground with his knife, only to have his earshot
off by his companions who were clearly not skilled
with a hunting rifle. In 1871, with knowledge of
California's gold veins, Dr. Wright stumbled upon
this stunning location nestled 1,000 feet
beneath timberline in Colorado's South
Central mountains. St. Elmo was located in
the upper Arkansas River Valley in Chaffee County,
today, on the slopes of Mount Princeton. When the town was originally
established in 1880, it was named for a city
because there are so many trees around here. But unfortunately,
California also had a town by the name of Forrest City. The Postal system requested
that the name be changed. And local lore is that
someone was reading the book by Augusta Evans called St. Elmo
and that the town was renamed-- Almost all the buildings you
see in St. Elmo are actually just two layers of 1-inch
boards nailed together. If they're really
ambitious, they'd put newspaper
between the boards. That was insulation. And that actually held
up the entire building which, given the fact there'd
be six or seven feet of snow in the winter, is quite amazing. They had wood stoves, so when
you cranked up your fire, it was either hot or cold. And it didn't really
matter the insulation at the end of the day. Primary ways to get up here
before rail service came through was by foot or by
horseback or on the stage. It was a bumpy long
ride from Buena Vista. When you got off
the stage, you could come and have a wonderful meal
somewhere, and find lodging and stay inside. At one time, Chaffee
County, St. Elmo was a bustling and
thriving railroad town and mining settlement. With a population of
over 1,500, the town served as a supply
stop and a hub for shipping ore from
one of the area's mines to the closest smelter. But life was not easy
at nearly 10,000 feet. The community of St. Elmo
faced miserable winters, with never ending snowstorms
and unreliable discoveries from the many surrounding mines. Mining boomtowns are so
fascinating because there're these little islands
of urban life in the middle of a
wilderness, right? And to even provide
the infrastructure to allow communities
like St. Elmo to persist takes extraordinary effort. There was interest in hard
rock mining here in the 1870s. And one of the
most prolific mine here was the Mary Murphy, which
was actually found in 1873. But it wasn't until 1880
that the town was actually planted as a townsite. And during the 1880s
through early 1890s, there were a significant
amount of people here searching for gold to
supply goods to the miners. But the key element in
St. Elmo was the decision by the Denver, South
Park, and Pacific to run their railroad
line through this canyon and through the Alpine Tunnel. Before the railroad arrived, you
brought in all of your supplies on the backs of mules. They couldn't grow
things in St. Elmo. So all of their
food was imported. All of their ores had to
be exported to smelters. The arrival of the railroad
provided some stability. A lot of railroad workers
lived in St. Elmo. That provided a
core of stability. St. Elmo quickly usurped Alpine
in population, in businesses, and many of the people in Alpine
moved their businesses here. Railroading was a tremendous
boon for the community because you get all sorts
of goods via the railroad. And it also offered a easy
way for some of the mines to send their processed
ore to smelters. Life, it was a
constant struggle. Particularly because despite
any of the amenities that they have, the gold miners
still had to struggle with very remote
locations of the mines, the remote location of
their towns, harsh winters, dry summers, forest fires. Unfortunately, it
was short lived. The Alpine Tunnel was
abandoned in the 1910s. So it had a very short lifespan. And with the demise of railroad
service to the Western Slope, it was just not as
profitable for the railroads to continue this line. And when the railroad
wanted to just close down, the citizens really put up
a good fight to keep it. And they lost. In the mid 1920s, the railroad
was abandoned, which kind of sealed the fate for St. Elmo. And so, it's really unique
amongst ghost towns and mining towns in Colorado, in that
all the buildings that we see date within a 10 year period. And that's what really makes
it unique amongst ghost towns in the Western United States. To the west, Animas Forks tells
a similar boom and bust story high above timberline. There are very few Colorado
communities more remote than Animas Forks. Animas Forks is located more
than two miles above sea level. It was founded in 1880, and it
was really quite the metropolis for its time. There were only maybe 500
residents At its peak. It is one of the most difficult
and challenging places you could build a town. This is a place where
the entire population had to leave in the winter
because the snows were so ferocious. Very often, the
people who lived there would winter in Silverton,
which is only 9,318 feet. Much more temperate. You're above timberline
in Animas Forks. Even in the summertime, this
is a very challenging place to live because of the altitude. The silver region
surrounding Animas Forks opened up in the early 1870s
after the forced removal of Utes during the
Brunot Agreement. This was all Ute land and
used as a summer hunting area by the Ute Indian people for
generations, if not centuries. But after the Brunot
Agreement of 1873, the land has opened
up for silver mining. And so, prospectors go
literally everywhere. They search every canyon,
every crevice, every slope for signs of gold and silver. There were some early strikes
of gold around Animas Forks, very early on around 1873. And in drew prospectors from
all over the region to see if they could strike it rich. And if you find gold and
silver in a place like this, and it seemed like your
fortunes was assured. And so, William Duncan
who was a prospector-- he was also a postal carrier-- arrives and builds this lavish
two story Victorian house as a sign of permanence. Mr. Duncan and his family,
after building this house, were out of there by 1879. I think the Duncan house is sort
of the last word in optimism, about what this
community can become. For William Duncan
and many others, you take one look at
Las Animas and look at the rich silver
deposits that you think, we can live the good life here. To get to the mines, you
have to climb steep slopes. And miners have to
become very inventive in creating technology
that allow them to get up to the mines, to
excavate the mines, and to bring the ore back down. The Gold Prince was high
up in California Gulch, and there was a big Tramway that
brought ore to a big mill that was built in 1912. It was first all-steel
mill in the United States. The development of tram
systems become the forerunners over our modern ski lifts today. It's been said about
mining Las Animas and in the San Juan
Mountains that in order to be a good miner, first you
have to be a good mountaineer. It was such a hot
strike that Otto Mears was persuaded to stand at
the railroad from Eureka to Animas Forks in
very steep grade. The irony of it all, and it's so
true in all of mining country, is that it ran
for less 10 years. Animas Forks actually
had a couple of saloons. It had a meat market. It had a hotel. It had a boarding house. It actually had its own
newspaper, The Animas Forks Pioneer. It's the highest
newspaper in the world. And newspapers are the
voice of the community. And so, the fact that Animas
Forks, this very, very remote community, had its own
newspaper is remarkable, but it's also essential to
the future of the community. This was beginning to look
like a stable community. It was also an urban center in
the middle of the wilderness. By 1884, it became more apparent
to the community leaders the town needed a jail. And so in 1884, the town
fathers built a board on board construction jail,
a very sturdy jail built out of two by fours laid flat. So you have four inch thick
walls with a double layer roof on top, as escape
proof as they could make it, so much so that the building
still persist today. In 1891, there was a big
fire in downtown Animas Forks and wiped out a good bit
of the downtown area. Those buildings never
were, really, ever rebuilt. And Animas Forks really
declined after that. The Gold Prince Mill
closed in about 1912. And all of that expense of
building a brand new mill and extending the
railroad was for naught. There was really no
future for Animas Forks. The legacy of Animas
Forks is the fact that people, their
spirits, are indomitable. Many of them were immigrants. A lot of them didn't
even speak English. And it's just a testament
to their toughness, their stubbornness,
to their aspiration for a new life in a
new country so far away from wherever they grew up. It's quite monumental, I think. It's just striking. The inevitable
boom and bust cycle was repeated from mining town
to mining town across Colorado. The town of Ashcroft was
one of the quickest to grow and the quickest to fail. 1879, the year as
Aspen's founding. Two prospectors from a man named
Charles Crazy Culver and WF Coxhead arrived to
Castle Creek Valley. And they began
prospecting and finding evidence of a very
rich silver mines. They laid out their
own community, a committee that was originally
known as Castle Forks-- and then briefly as Chloride
and not a very romantic name-- before they settled on
the name of Ashcroft. And there are many ideas of how
Ashcroft became to be the name. One being that there
was a gentleman here named Mr. Ashcraft and
somebody could have just spelled it wrong. Or Acroft, I guess, in
English, the Queen's English, is a large open meadow. And there is a large open
meadow here surrounded by trees that perhaps could have
been mistaken for ash trees? And so that was the name stuck
in this community-- better than Chloride. The first few
gentlemen into town here staked out the claims. Land was free. It was for the taking. So they came, and
plotted out the town, and then began
selling lots for $5. Ashcroft is a really great
case of an instant city. It's a place that is just a high
mountain riparian valley one day, and the next day, it is
a town complete with saloons and blacksmith shops and hotels
and dance halls and grocery stores and the post office. This town had 20 saloons. It wasn't just that
everyone wanted to drink at the end of the
day, but heating one building with 30 people inside
of it was easier than 30 people going to
their individual homes and heating them. They did add false fronts
to some of the buildings. So our mercantile store
and our post-office both had the false front. And you don't
realize there is only a small building behind it. It's marketing. The trajectory of Ashcroft was
very bright and very brief. The mine claims in
Aspen were proving to be richer with silver
ore than the claims that were out here. And when the railroad arrived
in Aspen in the mid 1880s, that really spelled
the end of Ashcroft. The railroad company
decided not to build up to Ashcroft, which meant
the freight prices were going to stay permanently high. And as a result, by
1890, Ashcroft was done. So people began to,
quite literally, lift their homes onto a
wagon and horse carriage-- pulled their homes that they
had built-- down into Aspen. Within the space of maybe seven
years, this town was founded, it boomed, it collapsed. The path of the railroad
determined the fate of many Colorado mining towns. While these locations
did not transform into the prosperous
towns and cities that bask in their mining
history with the new found industries, such
as outdoor recreation, their ghostly
preserved buildings remain top destinations for
preservationists and heritage tourism lovers from all over. Animas Forks is a ghost
town, but you'd never know if you were up
there on any summer day. There's probably more
tourists per hour than ever lived in Animas Forks. Working at Ashcroft that--
half the time, you're Henry David Thoreau and
the other half of the time, you're PT Barnum. In between those times,
in the summertime, 150, 200 300 people a day
come through this community. These towns are loved to death. At the Animas Forks, when we
were doing our stabilization project, we actually had
to thank crowd management. Not just preservation
of the buildings, but actually, where they
were supposed to walk. 99% of the people are wonderful. And they just love Animas Forks,
and they love the high country. But there are that 1%,
that draw their names, chip their names into wood
on the insides of buildings, who take boards off as a
souvenir to use as old barn wood. And that's a shame. We were seeing more
and more things like this, where people weren't
necessarily thinking that these were historic buildings. Unfortunately, we suffered
a massive fire here in 2002, which took out
five buildings, including the town hall and jail
and two other residences-- a barn, a garage, and
my favorite, a series of seven original outhouses. They were just wonderful. Those buildings are connecting
times of a very immediate and distant at the same time. So when we have a chance to be
in direct material relationship with people who
can't speak or act any more on their
own behalf, it's just on the borders
of religious meaning. But they were alive and
they were living there. And to say, we won't
let that vanish. In St. Elmo, the Marie cabin
that we did in the early '80s really taught me the
pleasure of preservation. And 40 years later, I go back
to it, and it's still there. It's very rewarding. The American House Hotel,
our current project, was quite a challenge
in that there was only a roof and the four walls. There were only two inches
thick with no floor. And we had to lift it up,
put a new floor in it, and preserve it as it is. The most special thing
about all of these buildings is that they retained
their original floor coverings, wallpaper,
just a note that someone may have written
and tacked up on the wall. It's still there. There's incredible wallpaper
in many of the buildings. Some of it is like
the [inaudible],, really wild colors
that you wouldn't have expected in the 1890s. St. Elmo is just an incredible
example of early vernacular mining town architecture. It's just tremendous. And the false fronts that
are here are original. We don't intend to
paint the buildings like they were, so they won't
be brand new gingerbread. They'll still be
the warm weather. And so we're trying to save the
town as it is, like you see it. A ghost town. An amazing one, quite frankly. That's why we really wanted
to put the boardwalks back in, give the visiting public
a sense of what this community looked like in 1880 or 1890. Now if you do go
to Ashcroft today, there are a number of
buildings that are original. The old blue mirror saloon where
Diane Sawyer, the last mayor of Ashcroft, held court
for all of the old timers will come in and tell
their tall tales. You can still go
in there and see remnants of the
original clock wallpaper on the walls of that saloon. You can go to the hotel view,
this beautiful two story frame building built with sort
of gingerbread lacing on the front of it, was the
primary hotel of the community. All of these buildings have
layers of history and mythology that have accreted
on them over time to create our understanding
of a community that was a real community with sort
of a mythical set of origin stories. A few of them,
however, we are just letting deteriorate, so
that you can actually see what would happen to
a building being left out in the snow and the cold
the rain and the heat. But others we do maintain
with keeping roofs on them and trying to keep
them preserved, so that the next
generation will be able to come out and enjoy the
same historic value that we have today. One big factor that puts
a town out of operation is remoteness and distance
and difficulty of access. So it takes quite a commitment
to go visit some of the towns. So then people who revere
the stories of the pioneer past, those ghost towns become
really places of pilgrimage. The buildings in St. Elmo,
in almost every mining camp, were only meant
to last 20 years. So all the buildings,
137-year-old buildings we're working on,
were only intended to last a very short
period of time. And to save that
history is just awesome. About the early
'90s, we've decided that we were going to take
on Animas Forks as a project. And that's where we
started our stabilization. But it is a definite contrast
that it booms and it busts, then it's gone-- as a place where human
beings do more than visit. Through record snow
falls, lazy summers, and hours of elbow
grease, the mining towns that once noisily
demonstrated westward expansion and the
struggle for riches now serve as symbols of
the Rocky Mountain past. The legacy that ghost towns
give us is of our past and where we come from. Our children, our
descendants, will still need to know where we came
from and why it's here. And one gentleman
that I talked to said that when he
was growing up, his father and his grandfather
would take him to ghost towns. And he wanted that
for his children too. And that, I think, is
what it's all about. As a child, my
family would come up on picnics during the summer. And my father was always very
quick to explain to us that you enjoy these areas, but
you'd leave everything as you found it. Because it belonged to someone. It's a wonderful
outdoor experience. It's a family thing to
do, spending good family time together. Well, the buildings are
technically voiceless and speechless. They're very silent speaks. They are really forceful
emissaries from the past. They carry a message
of the time that brought them into being the
people that brought them into being. They're not memorials
built for those people. They're actual work
of those people. We go to go towns for evidence
of the past, perpetually an incomplete of the past. This is the beginning. These are the origin stories
of settlement and civilization in Colorado. And the fact that these places
failed while other communities survived and flourished
speaks to the marginal nature of life in Colorado. But we have this beautiful
valley, hopefully, for many generations
forward as a reminder of the ingenuity,
the pioneer spirit and the actual celebration of-- we care for the land today,
much like the native people did. We take care of the trees and
the rivers and the environment and the animals, much like
the native people did. And that, to me, is
kind of the full cycle.
