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Crested Butte

Founded in 1878, Crested Butte is a former coal-mining town turned ski resort nestled in the Elk Mountains of northern Gunnison County. The town lies about twenty-eight miles north of the county seat of Gunnison and about the same distance south of Aspen…

Crystal Mill

Built in 1892, the Crystal Mill is a log-and-frame structure atop a rocky outcrop along the Crystal River in northwest Gunnison County. At the time of its construction, the “mill” served as a powerhouse for local silver mines, allowing both the mines and…

Gunnison County

Gunnison County, named for the American explorer John W. Gunnison, is a large, mountainous county in west-central Colorado. A sparsely populated county of 3,260 square miles, it includes some 1.5 million acres of national forest and wilderness lands,…

Western Slope

“A Fantasy land,” “a mystique,” “a state of mind”—these are only some of the expressions used to describe the Western Slope of Colorado, commonly defined as the roughly one-third of the state that lies west of the Continental Divide. The serpentine…