Ghost Towns and Mining Ruins

One of our favorite things to do on road trips through the mountains is go to ghost towns. We've been steadily checking off towns from the Ghost Towns of Colorado book over the last few years. I put most of the better photos together in a flickr set:

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Photos from our trip

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We took a long road trip through a couple of ghost towns (St. Elmo, Ironton) and camped in Ridgeway, Colroado. We also spent some time in Ouray, and a night outside of Silverton on the banks of the beautiful Molas Lake. Take a look through the photos (34 of the better ones from the trip).

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August 17 Denver Storm - Lit by Lightning - no photoshop

Floorboards in the Duncan house in the ghost-town of Animas Forks, Colorado

Gray Jay in Animas Forks, Colorado

Ridgeway State Park

Wallpaper in the Gustafson House - Animas Forks, Colorado

All photos by Nathan Abels - taken in the last week or so.

Nevadaville Revisted.

Last weekend we took a drive on the Peak to Peak byway from Central City to Estes Park, Colorado. We made a stop in one of the closer ghost towns to Denver called Nevadaville. It's hard to believe that during the peak of mining prosperity in the area more than a thousand people lived here. Here are several then and now comparison photos.

I've posted about Nevadaville previously and the art of Andre Yi.

Nevadaville, 19001937

February 2009

Sherriff Leonard Nichols -last resident of Nevadaville (photo ca. 1931-1935)

Main Street Nevadaville, February 2009

Colorado Trading & Investment Co. ca. 1894-1898
1939

February 2009

Main St., Nevadaville, Spring 1939Main St., Nevadaville, February 2009

Black and white historical photos from the DPL Western History and Genealogy archive.

Textures

I took these photos of walls in Silverton, CO and Animas Forks, CO:

Andre Yi and Nevadaville

Andre Yi, "Nevadaville (Bridge)", Acrylic, Ink and colored Pencil on canvas, 2006, 20 x 32 inches

Andre Yi, "Nevadaville (Gallows Frame)", Acrylic, Ink and colored Pencil on canvas, 2006, 24 x 24 inches

Nathan Abels, "Nevadaville Mining Ruins"

I was just browsing the work of Andre Yi, and the first piece I came across was called "Nevadaville (Gallows Frame)" (above). It's crazy how close we must have been to where he took his reference photo two years ago. About two weeks ago I wrote a post about Nevadaville and the ghost towns along the Peak to Peak byway. Looks like he beat me to the punch by a couple of years. He gave the mining equipment of Nevadaville a real melancholy that I enjoy.

Nevadaville

Nevadaville, CO photos by Nathan Abels

Chances are you've never heard of Nevadaville, CO. I hadn't either before this last Friday when we took a short day trip along the Peak to Peak byway. The Peak to Peak byway is a road established in 1918 that was intended to connect Pike's Peak and Long's peak, but only covers the area roughly from Golden, CO to Estes Park (55 miles). It could be covered pretty quickly, but if you did that you would be missing out. Our first detour was a stop in Central City - a town far more interesting than the built-up casinos of neighboring Blackhawk, CO. From Central City, we followed a dirt road one mile uphill to Nevadaville, CO. According to Ghosttowns.com, Nevadaville was once a thriving town of 4,000 residents in the late part of the nineteenth century but as of ten years ago only six people called Nevadaville home. From the looks of it, six residents is probably a high estimate in 2008. The photos I took there (above) are not much to look at, and do the setting a bit of an injustice. The photos do show remnants fo mining operations - evidence of which can be found all over Nevadaville. The town has a very short (aprox 5 buildings) main street of sorts in which a fire house/city hall rests and a few large-windowed storefronts lie abandoned.

photos by Dolores Steele

Numerous empty structures litter the surrounding hills and large deposits of the gold-gray colored dirt from mining fill the valley. It was a strange place, and since moving to Colorado this was the fullest ghost-town we've encountered in terms of standing structures. I find these time-capsules in the mountains to be quite fascinating and I'd recommend taking the Peak to Peak byway to anyone along the Front Range. It's an easy day trip with lots to see. More of my pics from the trip can be found here.