Located about five miles north of Westcliffe in the Wet Mountain Valley, Beckwith Ranch was established in 1870 by brothers Edwin and Elton Beckwith and grew to be one of the largest cattle operations in south-central Colorado. In the 1880s and 1890s the…

Buffalo Peaks Ranch is one of the oldest ranches in South Park, with roots in Adolphe and Marie Guiraud’s 1862 homestead along the Middle Fork of the South Platte River between Hartsel and Fairplay. Over the next eighty years, three generations of the…

In 1866 the rancher and businessman Charles Hall added a kettle house and barn to his Colorado Salt Works in South Park. The only salt works and the second manufacturing facility built in Colorado, the buildings operated intermittently for several years…

The Fairplay Hotel was designed in the Rustic style by architect William Bowman and completed in 1922. Located on the site of an earlier hotel at the prominent corner of Fifth and Main Streets, the Fairplay became the largest and oldest hotel in town,…

Park County covers 2,211 square miles of the Rocky Mountains in central Colorado. Park County’s elevation rages from 7,000 to 14,000 feet. The county’s namesake and dominant geographic feature is South Park, a large, high-altitude basin containing the…