The historic mining town of St. Elmo was founded in 1880 and flourished for less than a decade. It is located in Chalk Creek Canyon near Buena Vista at an elevation of 10,000 feet. It is considered one of the best-preserved ghost towns in the West. The town attracts roughly 50,000 tourists annually, including many who use it as a base for hiking and four-wheeling.

Early Settlement

In 1871 prospector Abner Ellis Wright was the first to settle in Chalk Creek Canyon. where St. Elmo would be established. By 1875, he and his partner, John Royal, had discovered an unusually high-grade vein of silver ore on Chrysolite Mountain four miles south of the future site of St. Elmo. The claim would be named the Mary Murphy and eventually became the most successful mine in the Chalk Creek district.

Starting in 1878, the Leadville silver strikes produced swarms of new prospectors in the Arkansas River Valley. By 1880 Chalk Creek Canyon was benefiting from the boom. That year Griffith Evans and Charles Seitz laid out a townsite called Forest City. However, the name was denied by the US Post Office, because it was preceded by a Forest City in California. The town was renamed St. Elmo. One story holds that Evans suggested the new name because he had recently read the novel St. Elmo by Augusta J. Evans.

The population of the St. Elmo area grew from a few prospectors in 1871 to estimates as high as 2,000 by 1881. This included residents in temporary shelters at various mine locations. The town was a dynamic place. New miners arrived around the clock to cash in on the bonanza. The Mary Murphy was extracting between 70 and 100 tons of silver and gold ore daily in 1881. The mine employed more than 250 men at the peak of production. Several silver strikes were made in nearby Grizzly Gulch and by 1883 the district had fifty producing mines.

With the rush of prospectors into the Chalk Creek area, St. Elmo’s business district quickly took shape. The Denver Tribune observed: “St. Elmo, a town of less than 6 months, has two sawmills, a smelter and concentrator, 3 hotels, 5 restaurants and several stores.” Other new businesses and civic institutions began appearing. These included a surveyor’s office, a jeweler, an assayer, an attorney, a drug store, a meat market, several saloons, a feed store, a clothing store, a blacksmith, a city hall, a post office, a firehouse, and a pair of banks.

Boomtown Growth

In the late 1870s St. Elmo still had canvas tents, pine-covered dugouts, and earth-roofed huts at the mine sites. These were followed by unsophisticated cabins built of the most plentiful materials to be found—spruce logs. As time passed, some of the early log structures—crude and often drafty—were boarded over with siding. Still other structures remained log, but false fronts were added to make them look more impressive. The most refined buildings in St. Elmo were balloon-frame stores and houses, which used vertical boards attached at both the foundation and roof plates to support the walls. More complex masonry structures of stone or brick, designed by professional architects, were not built in the St. Elmo camp.

Reporting on the early mining activities were the town’s first newspapers, beginning with the Rustler in September 1880. The paper was sold in 1881 and renamed the St. Elmo Mountaineer. Later a mining paper called the Mineral Belt took the Mountaineer’s place.

The road from the Arkansas River Valley to St. Elmo had been widened from what were original game trails and Indian footpaths. In the early 1880s the road could accommodate horse travel, ore wagons, and stagecoaches. J. L. Sanderson ran a fleet of passenger stagecoaches and freight wagons out of St. Elmo. The road was on the Chalk Creek and Elk Mountain Toll Road, the pioneer route to Aspen. A toll road also was constructed for travel south into Maysville and the Mt. Shavano mining district.

St. Elmo was soon large and successful enough for a railroad connection. In 1880 the Denver, South Park and Pacific Railroad completed a line up in St. Elmo. Fisher Railroad Station was located at the east edge of town. The railroad began an ambitious and expensive effort to build the 1,845-foot Alpine Tunnel through the Continental Divide. The tunnel was completed in 1882 and cost $250,000 and opened a new trade route to the Western Slope. The Alpine Tunnel’s interior was lined with California redwood for durability in its cold and damp setting.

Decline

St. Elmo’s growth stalled in the late 1880s. Several factors kept the town from becoming one of Colorado’s rich mining camps. Even though it had early rail service, the town was sixteen miles off the principal routes. Miners had difficulty obtaining the outside financing that was critical for new exploration and mining expansion. Its ores were of lower grade than those of more successful mining camps, which meant that the extraction and refining processes were slower and more expensive.

In 1890 a fire burned through the town. It destroyed every business on the south side of Main Street and burned several buildings on the north side. After the fire many St. Elmo residents packed up and left, and the town’s population declined from 750 to 500 by 1891. The repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act in 1893 dealt another blow to the struggling town. The new law devalued silver, leaving it worth much less than it had been previously. Even the best silver mines on Chrysolite Mountain were nearly abandoned. Like most other silver camps, St. Elmo never fully recovered from the crash.

Later in the 1890s new gold discoveries began to revive St. Elmo’s economy. But in January 1898 fire again engulfed St. Elmo’s commercial district. By the end of the year some of the damaged structures had been rebuilt. The town never completely regained what it lost.

In 1905 the Mary Murphy Silver Mine was reopened under the ownership of an English syndicate. But precious metals mining declined in the years before World War I in favor of iron and other ores for the war effort. After the war, precious metals prices did not justify a return to full-scale mining in St. Elmo.

The Alpine Tunnel had been abandoned in 1910, and trains stopped running up Chalk Creek Canyon in 1922. Four years later the Colorado and Southern Railroad pulled up the tracks despite the town’s legal steps to prevent the action. With the tracks gone, the old railbed on the south side of the canyon was converted into an automobile road. The Mary Murphy Mine closed in 1936.

Preservation

By 1943 St. Elmo had only two full-time residents, siblings Annabelle and Tony Stark. As others left, the Starks bought many of the town’s remaining buildings and converted them to summer cabins for tourists. In 1960 the Starks willed their St. Elmo holdings to Marie Skogsberg, a family friend. Subsequently, Skogsberg’s granddaughter, Melanie Milam Roth, helped her family hold on to many of the better buildings in town. These became part of the Milam Family Trust. In the late 1950s, St. Elmo property owners began to take care of the public buildings, such as the schoolhouse and the town hall. After organizing as the St. Elmo Property Owners Association, they became the owners of the schoolhouse in 1975 and of the town hall in 1989.

Many of the town’s buildings have vanished from the wear of time, heavy snow loads, and wind. However, roughly forty early structures remain intact. The Miner’s Exchange building (1892), which served as a bank and saloon before becoming a general store still stands. Other surviving buildings include Pat Hurley’s Saloon (1892), the Pawnee Mining and Milling Company building (1880), and the Home Comfort Hotel/Stark Store (1885).

In 1979 Melanie Roth and Colorado Springs architect Doug Hagen got the town listed as a National Historic District. The goodwill of local property owners over the past century has helped St. Elmo remain one of the West’s best-preserved ghost towns. A ghost town is a place that has been abandoned, but the structures still remain. The town’s few full-time residents and about fifty summer residents might dispute the notion that it is a true ghost town.

Today

The National Register listing protects St. Elmo from federal projects. But nothing prevents private development in the area. In the 1960s, before St. Elmo was listed as a historic site, a development group called Consortium B bought property near the town. They hoped to turn it into a ski resort. That plan was abandoned after a multi-year drought. The Milam Trust was able to buy much of the developer’s property to enable its preservation.

In the 1980s with increases in gold and silver prices, the American International Metal Company leased the Mary Murphy Mine. They planned to reopen it and they demolished the historic mine buildings and mill. They claimed that they were an insurance liability. Then, they gave up the project because the area had too much snow to make mining there financially profitable.

Perhaps the greatest threat facing the wooden buildings in St. Elmo is fire. In April 2002 a major fire destroyed five buildings in St. Elmo. This included the town hall, which dated to the early 1890s and had survived several previous fires.

After the fire, the St. Elmo Property Owners Association transferred ownership of the charred town hall and the schoolhouse to the nonprofit Buena Vista Heritage. In 2005, with financial help from a State Historical Fund grant and private donations, they restored the schoolhouse. It opened to the public as the St. Elmo Schoolhouse Museum in June 2006. The Buena Vista Heritage began to rebuild the burnt town hall. It was completed in 2008 and also operates as a museum of local history. In 2010 Melanie Roth and others formed a new nonprofit called Historic St. Elmo and Chalk Creek Canyon to support further preservation work in the area.

The historic mining town of St. Elmo was founded in 1880 and flourished for less than a decade. It is considered one of the best-preserved ghost towns in the West. It is located in Chalk Creek Canyon near Buena Vista at an elevation of 10,000 feet. The town attracts roughly 50,000 tourists a year. It is used as a base for hiking and four-wheeling.

Early Settlement

In 1871 prospector Abner Wright settled in Chalk Creek Canyon. By 1875, he and his partner, John Royal, had discovered a high-grade vein of silver ore on Chrysolite Mountain. They named the claim the Mary Murphy Mine. It eventually became the most successful mine in the Chalk Creek district.

Starting in 1878, the Leadville silver strikes produced swarms of new prospectors in the Arkansas River Valley. By 1880 Chalk Creek Canyon was benefiting from the boom. That year Griffith Evans and Charles Seitz planned a town site. They named their new town Forest City. However, the US Post Office denied the name because it was the name of a town in California. The town was renamed St. Elmo. It was named for a popular novel called St. Elmo by Augusta J. Evans.

The population of the St. Elmo area grew from a few prospectors in 1871 to 2,000 people in 1881. This included miners living in temporary shelters at their mines. The town was a dynamic place. New miners arrived around the clock to cash in on the bonanza. By 1881, the Mary Murphy extracted 70 to 100 tons of silver and gold ore each day. The mine employed more than 250 men at the peak of production. Several silver strikes were made in nearby Grizzly Gulch, and by 1883 the district had fifty producing mines.

With the rush of prospectors into the Chalk Creek area, St. Elmo’s business district quickly took shape. The Denver Tribune observed: “St. Elmo, a town of less than 6 months, has two sawmills, a smelter and concentrator, 3 hotels, 5 restaurants and several stores.” New businesses and institutions began appearing. These included a surveyor’s office, a jeweler, an assayer, an attorney, a drug store, a meat market, several saloons, a feed store, a clothing store, and a blacksmith. Soon a city hall, a post office, a firehouse, and a pair of banks were built.

Boomtown Growth

In the late 1870s St. Elmo still had canvas tents, pine-covered dugouts, and earth-roofed huts at the mine sites. These were followed by cabins built of the most plentiful material to be found—spruce logs. As time passed, some of the early log structures were boarded over with siding. Other structures remained log, but false fronts were added to make them look more impressive. The most refined buildings in St. Elmo were frame stores and houses. These used vertical boards attached at both the foundation and roof plates to support the walls. More complex buildings of stone or brick were not built in St. Elmo.

The early mining activities were reported in the town’s first newspapers. The Rustler started in September 1880. It was sold in 1881 and renamed the St. Elmo Mountaineer. Later a mining paper called the Mineral Belt took the Mountaineer’s place.

The road from the Arkansas River Valley to St. Elmo grew with the town. The original road was built over game trails and Indian footpaths. In the early 1880s the road could accommodate horse travel, ore wagons, and stagecoaches. J. L. Sanderson ran a fleet of passenger stagecoaches and freight wagons out of St. Elmo. The road was on the Chalk Creek and Elk Mountain Toll Road, the pioneer route to Aspen. A toll road also was constructed for travel south into Maysville and the Mt. Shavano mining district.

St. Elmo was soon large and successful enough for a railroad. In 1880 the Denver, South Park and Pacific Railroad completed a line to St. Elmo The railroad built an ambitious and expensive tunnel through the Continental Divide. The Alpine Tunnel was completed in 1882. It cost $250,000 and connected St. Elmo with the Western Slope. The Alpine Tunnel’s interior was lined with California redwood to protect it from the harsh winter conditions.

Decline

St. Elmo’s growth stalled in the late 1880s. Several factors kept the town from becoming one of Colorado’s rich mining camps. Even though it had early rail service, the town was miles off the principal routes. Miners had difficulty obtaining the financing for new exploration and mining expansion. The area’s ores were of lower grade than those of more successful mining camps. This meant that the extraction and refining processes was slower and more expensive.

In 1890 a fire burned through the town. It destroyed every business on the south side of Main Street and burned several buildings on the north side. After the fire many St. Elmo residents packed up and left. The town’s population declined from 750 to 500 by 1891.

The repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act in 1893 dealt another blow to the struggling town. The new law made the value of silver fall to low levels. Even the best silver mines on Chrysolite Mountain were nearly abandoned. Like most other silver camps, St. Elmo never recovered from the crash.

Later in the 1890s new gold discoveries began to revive St. Elmo’s economy. But in January 1898, another fire engulfed St. Elmo’s main street area. By the end of the year some of the damaged structures had been rebuilt. Again, the town never regained what it lost.

In 1905 the Mary Murphy Mine was reopened under English ownership. But mining for gold and silver had declined. In the years around World War I, mining was focused on iron and other ores needed for the war effort. After the war, gold and silver prices did not justify a return to full-scale mining in St. Elmo. The Alpine Tunnel was abandoned in 1910. In 1922 trains stopped running up Chalk Creek Canyon to the town. Four years later the railroad pulled up the tracks despite the town’s legal steps to prevent the action. With the tracks gone, the old railbed on the south side of the canyon was converted into an automobile road. The Mary Murphy Mine closed in 1936.

Preservation

By 1943 St. Elmo had only two full-time residents, brother and sister Annabelle and Tony Stark. The Starks bought many of the town’s remaining buildings and converted them to summer cabins for tourists. In 1960 the Starks willed their St. Elmo properties to Marie Skogsberg, a family friend.

The Skogsberg family wanted to preserve St. Elmo. Melanie Milam Roth, a granddaughter helped her family hold on to many of the better buildings in town. These became part of the Milam Family Trust. In the late 1950s, the Milams and other property owners began to take care of the public buildings. They organized the St. Elmo Property Owners Association. They bought the schoolhouse in 1975 and the town hall in 1989.

Many of the town’s buildings have vanished from the wear of natural forces. However, roughly forty early structures remain. One is the Miner’s Exchange building (1892), which served as a bank and saloon before becoming a general store. Other surviving buildings include Pat Hurley’s Saloon (1892), the Pawnee Mining and Milling Company building (1880), and the Home Comfort Hotel/Stark Store (1885).

In 1979 the town was listed as a National Historic District. The property owners have helped St. Elmo become one of the West’s best-preserved ghost towns. A ghost town is a place that is totally abandoned, while the structures remain. St. Elmo is not really a true ghost town, since it has a few full-time residents and about fifty summer residents.

Today

The National Register listing protects St. Elmo from federal projects. But it did not prevent private development in the area. In the 1960s, before St. Elmo was listed as a historic site, a development group bought property near the town. They hoped to start a ski resort. That plan was abandoned after a multi-year drought. Fortunately, the Milam Trust was able to acquire much of the developer’s property.

In the 1980s, gold and silver prices increased. The American International Metal Company leased and planned to reopen the Mary Murphy Mine. They tore down the historic mine buildings and mill. They claimed that the buildings were an insurance liability. Then, they gave up on the project because the area had too much snow to make mining profitable.

The greatest threat facing the wooden buildings in St. Elmo is fire. In April 2002 a fire destroyed five buildings in St. Elmo. This included the town hall, which dated to the early 1890s and had survived several previous fires. A new preservation group called Buena Vista Heritage was formed. After the fire, the St. Elmo Property Owners gave ownership of the charred town hall and the schoolhouse to the group. In 2005, with financial help from a State Historical Fund grant and private donations, they restored the schoolhouse. It opened to the public as the St. Elmo Schoolhouse Museum in June 2006. The Buena Vista Heritage rebuilt the burnt town hall. It was completed in 2008 and also operates as a museum of local history. In 2010 Melanie Roth and others formed a new nonprofit called Historic St. Elmo and Chalk Creek Canyon. It supports further preservation work in the area.

The historic mining town of St. Elmo started in 1880. It is one of the best-preserved “ghost towns” in the West. People use it as a base for hiking and four-wheeling. It is in Chalk Creek Canyon near Buena Vista. It is high in the mountains at an elevation of 10,000 feet.

Early Settlement

In 1871, Abner Wright settled in Chalk Creek Canyon. By 1875, he and his partner, John Royal, had discovered a rich vein of silver ore. They named their mine the Mary Murphy Mine. It would become the most successful mine in the area.

In 1878, silver was discovered near Leadville. People came to the area hoping to strike it rich. By 1880 they were looking for silver in Chalk Creek Canyon. That year two men marked out land for a new town. They named it Forest City. However, that name was already taken by a city in California. The US Post Office asked them to pick a different name. They renamed it St. Elmo. It was named after a popular book called St. Elmo by Augusta Evans.

In 1871 only a few people lived in the area. By 1881, the population was 2,000. The town was an exciting place. New miners kept arriving to search for silver and gold. Every day, tons of silver and gold were mined from the Mary Murphy. More than 250 men worked at the mine. Several silver strikes were made in nearby Grizzly Gulch. By 1883 the area had 50 gold and silver mines.

St. Elmo grew quickly. In less than 6 months it had 2 sawmills, a smelter, 3 hotels, 5 restaurants and stores. Soon, other businesses started. They included a surveyor’s office, a jeweler, an attorney, a drug store and plenty of saloons. There was a meat market, a feed store, a clothing store and a blacksmith. Finally, a city hall, a post office, a firehouse, and 2 banks were added.

Boomtown Growth

In the 1870s, people in St. Elmo lived in tents, dugouts, and huts. As the town grew, cabins were built of pine logs. Later, some of the cabins were covered with boards. Some buildings added “false fronts” to make them look more impressive. There were not any brick and stone buildings in St. Elmo.

The road to St. Elmo grew with the town. The original road was built on trails and Indian footpaths. In the 1880s the road was wide enough for horses and wagons. Later, passenger stagecoaches and freight wagons ran to St. Elmo.

St. Elmo was large and successful enough to have a railroad. In 1880 a train line was put into the town. In 1882, the railroad built a tunnel through the Continental Divide. It was called the Alpine Tunnel. It connected St. Elmo with the Western Slope.

Decline

St. Elmo stopped growing in the late 1880s. The town never became one of Colorado’s rich mining camps. There were some reasons for this. The town was not on a major travel route. Also, it was hard for miners to get money to explore and expand the mines. And, the silver and gold were low grade. This meant the refining process was slow and more expensive. Then, in 1890 a fire burned through the town. It destroyed many businesses on Main Street. After the fire, many St. Elmo residents packed up and left.

In 1893 the government passed a new law. It made silver much less valuable than it had been. Silver mines in the area were abandoned. Like many other Colorado silver camps, the town was never the same. Then in 1898, another fire burned St. Elmo. Some of the damaged structures were rebuilt, but the town struggled even more.

In 1905 the Mary Murphy Mine was reopened. But gold and silver mining declined in the years around World War I. People were mining iron and other ores for the war. After the war, in 1936, the mine closed.

The Alpine Tunnel closed in 1910. In 1922 trains stopped running to St. Elmo. Four years later the railroad pulled up the tracks. With the tracks gone, the old rail bed was made into an automobile road.

Preservation

By 1943, only two people lived in St. Elmo. They were brother and sister, Annabelle and Tony Stark. The Starks bought many of the town’s buildings. They changed them to summer cabins for tourists. In 1960, Marie Skogsberg, a family friend, became the owner.

The Skogsberg family wanted to care for the properties. One granddaughter, Melanie Milam Roth, started the Milam Family Trust. In the 1950s, the Milams and other property owners began to take care of the public buildings. They bought the schoolhouse in 1975. The bought the town hall in 1989.

About 40 forty buildings are still standing in St. Elmo. One is the Miner’s Exchange building. It was a bank and saloon before it became a general store. Other buildings include a saloon, a mining company building, and a hotel.

In 1979 the town was listed as a National Historic District. The property owners have helped make St. Elmo into one of the West’s best-preserved ghost towns. A ghost town is a place that people don’t live anymore, but where buildings are still standing. St. Elmo is not really a ghost town. The town has a few people who live there all year. In the summer about 50 people live there.

Today

In the 1960s, some businessmen bought property near the town. They hoped to turn it into a ski resort. It was not successful. In the 1980s, a mining company reopened the Mary Murphy Mine. They tore down the historic mine buildings. They said that they were dangerous. But then, they left the area because it had too much snow.

In 2002 a fire destroyed five buildings in St. Elmo. It burnt down the town hall. It had been built in the 1890s. It had survived all the other fires. In 2005, a group fixed up the schoolhouse. It opened as the St. Elmo Schoolhouse Museum. In 2008, the burnt town hall was rebuilt. It is now a museum about St. Elmo’s history.