Prospectors lured to the West in hopes of striking rich settled a
thousand towns in the Colorado mountains. The cry of ""Gold!"" or
""Silver!"" or a few flecks of color in a tin cup sent them to
remote, often inhospitable locations to search for the precious
metals.Close on the heels of the miners were the merchant, the
gamblers, the prostitutes, the washerwomen, the capitalists, and
the con men. Together they turned the mining camps into bustling
towns where saloons never closed and the safest place for a man to
walk after dark was down the middle of the street with a gun in
each hand. Colorado Ghost Towns and Mining Camps is the first new
book in more than twenty-five years to document these mountain
communities. Most of the early settlers are gone, leaving few
persons with any oral tradition to pass on to future generations.
For many of the 147 towns and camps listed in this book, not much
remains to be preserved beyond what Dallas and photographer Kendal
Atchison have recorded. The book is lavishly illustrated with 290
photographs. In addition to those by Atchison and early historical
photographs, rare photographs from the 1920s and 1930s are
included, many never published before. Some of Atchison's superb
photographs evoke nostalgia with views of abandoned buildings
deteriorating amid meadow wildflowers. Soon nothing will remain but
the Colorado landscape, with the eternal mountains towering close
by. The town histories are traced from their beginning in
strike-it-rich excitement and glittering boom years, through the
declines, to the present day. Some of these hopeful towns, such as
Lulu, were deserted as quickly as they were settled, lasting barely
more than a season, while a few, including Aspen and Breckenridge,
are as lively today as they were a century ago. But most of them,
like Animas Forks, flourished until the gold or silver played out
and were abandoned, leaving a few lonely cabins or picturesque
ruins. Towns such as Aspen, Crested Butte, Cripple Creek, and
Breckenridge have lived on to become popular ski resorts, and these
places warrant additional vignettes that add color and to the text.
Written to inform and entertain the general reader, this book will
be a delight for armchair adventurers as well as invaluable for
vacationers interested in visiting the sites of these Colorado
boomtowns. Most of the places are no longer shown on modern road
maps, and special maps of the region have been prepared for this
book.
General
Imprint: |
University of Oklahoma Press
|
Country of origin: |
United States |
Release date: |
March 1988 |
First published: |
March 1988 |
Authors: |
Sandra Dallas
|
Photographers: |
Kendal Atchison
|
Dimensions: |
279 x 213 x 20mm (L x W x T) |
Format: |
Paperback
|
Pages: |
264 |
Edition: |
New edition |
ISBN-13: |
978-0-8061-2084-3 |
Categories: |
Books >
Humanities >
History >
General
Books >
History >
General
|
LSN: |
0-8061-2084-3 |
Barcode: |
9780806120843 |
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