Jul. 07, 2007 - 19:23 MDT

NO LONGER

There is a town on the Western Slope of Colorado that is an example of what happens to old mining and/or cattle towns out here.

It used to be a coal mining town (one of many here), it had a heavy population of Croatian miners. The mines belonged to a feller (you know who I mean) which supplied coal to his smelters here in Colorado. Those miners were predominately foreign people and often mixed so that there was little communication between them.

But during the sixties, mountain bikers, skiers and real estate agents changed the scene radically.

Now the company store is a mall, the old mine workers hall where the miners once gathered to toast and bury those who were no longer there, is now an inn and boutique, North of town a ranch was transformed into a ski area. The old mortuary has been made into a girl's clothing store. The old bar is now a Massage and Wellness center.

Dr. Colorado - - Tom Noel, says about this town, "Few remember it as a poor company town coughing in its own coal smoke." "Every place in town used to burn coal. There was tons of the stuff, and it was cheaper than dirt. Coal smoke smothered this valley. Particles of the coal precipitated the snow out of the clouds."

What Tom Noel wrote today reminds me of Blackhawk and Central City west of Denver. Blackhawk was on the highway and Central City abutted it on the uphill side. When I was a kid they were ghost towns, about the only thing open was a grocery store with gas pumps just off the highway (if one could call it a highway then). Their ghosthood was solidified by gold mining being shut down during War Two. I remember wandering the town and seeing through store windows ghostly figures moving around in the back. It was populated and poor for sure.

Then in the sixties it became somewhat of a place that played on its history, many of the buildings opened up as stores and bars and novelty shops and the towns began to change.

Then a bit further down the road gambling came to this state and the citizens of those two towns voted to have gambling there.

Much of the face of the earth in Blackhawk changed. Hillsides bulldozed and fancy gambling halls built. I doubt if there is much left of old Blackhawk now. There are traffic lights now and tour busses bringing gamblers up to spend money.

Central City is a tad different, but just a tad. Most of the old buildings are still there, but were gutted and modern things installed.

And it seemed to turn out that those who voted gambling in found out they could no longer afford to live there.

Many of those old towns have become high priced resorts, Aspen is one of them, Telluride another as well as Cripple Creek.

One town struggling to survive and existing with little to help is Georgetown with its Georgetown Loop railway going up to Silver Plume a short distance uphill from Georgetown. The engines are mountain engines and the railway forms a loop crossing over itself about 60 feet higher getting a start on the uphill climb. That fare is increasing by the year, just like everything else.

And the hills outside of Denver on into the mountains suffers an outbreak of the Big, Fancy, Expensive houses that would probably look nice down in town, but look so bizarre sticking boldly out of a hillside, seemingly no effort being made to fit the houses into mountain scenery.

Heather gave me a book of old Denver photographs, and daughter-in-law and I in looking through both noticed the smoke in the air in the old Denver scenes.

Maybe it is just us old folks who mourn the differences now. And perhaps some of it is pure progress under the pressure of increasing population. But to me the Wild, Wild West is wild NO LONGER . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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