Places

The Empire Chief Mine and Mill site is an abandoned nineteenth-century metal mining complex in Hinsdale County , located several miles west of Lake City on the southern slope of Sheep Mountain (83 Sunny Ave, Empire, CO 80438). The mine was established in 1885 after the discovery of the Bonanza Lode...

Willowcroft Manor was built in 1884 as the home of Littleton -area pioneer Joseph W. Bowles. Designed by early Colorado architect Robert S. Roeschlaub , the two-story stone house was on Bowles’s property near the southwest corner of what is now West Bowles Avenue (which was named for Bowles) and...

The Tremont House Hotel was established in the fall of 1859 near Cherry Creek in Auraria (later West Denver) and soon became one of Denver ’s top hotels. In the 1880s, the hotel declined as flood-prone West Denver became home to immigrants and industry while wealthy residents moved to new...

The Stewart’s Cattle Guard Archaeological Site in the San Luis Valley represents a late summer or early fall bison hunting camp occupied by Folsom peoples in the Paleo-Indian period (before 6000 BCE). The site was discovered in the late 1970s and excavated by the Smithsonian Institution’s Paleo-...

The Manitou Springs Spa Building stands on top of Soda (or Manitou) Spring on the north bank of Fountain Creek in downtown Manitou Springs . The three-story Spanish Colonial Revival building was built in 1920 to help revive Manitou’s sagging health tourism industry by offering modern mineral water...

The Harris Archaeological Site includes an Archaic period rockshelter first occupied at least 3,500 years ago, associated rock art , and a separate historic Ute campsite along a drainage on the eastern edge of the Uncompahgre Plateau . The site is named for Bill Harris, who discovered it in 1984,...

Driggs Mansion is a one-story sandstone house in Unaweep Canyon that was built for Laurence Driggs around 1918. Constructed by Grand Junction stonemason Nunzio Grasso and his son, the house later served as a hunting retreat before parts of it were torn down in the 1940s and 1950s. Today the mansion...

Elbert County, named for former Colorado territorial governor Samuel H. Elbert , covers 1,851 square miles on the Great Plains southeast of Denver . It is bordered to the north by Arapahoe County , to the east and south by Lincoln County , to the south by El Paso County , and to the west by Douglas...

Victor, the “City of Mines,” is located in Teller County on the western side of Pikes Peak . Incorporated in 1894, Victor was part of the Cripple Creek District , site of Colorado’s last significant gold mining boom. The city is situated next to Pike National Forest and overlooks the Wet Mountains...