october-2009

PHOTOGRAPHS BY SAM POLCER
thousands of residents, some rest in local cemeteries;
others likely departed for the next “next chance.”
Today’s Nevadaville is abandoned but for a handful
of occupied homes on a hill above town. The main
street has a few forlorn buildings and ruined foundations;
a stroll past the old fire department/city hall
building offers visitors an eerie sense that this was
once indeed a big town.
Yet among this sense of ruin, visitors can find
perhaps the most compelling aspect of ghost towns—a
deeper, if more troubling, truth of the human
condition: Nothing we create is permanent. “I would
say there’s really a cultural appeal (to ghost towns),”
Andrews says. “They really are places of tremendous
failure and suffering. They’re humbling places.”
Take Mount Vernon, a ghost town in the foothills
near Denver. In 1859, Dr. Joseph Casto plotted the
town’s 3,600 lots near a major route into the mountains,
hoping to build a metropolis that would supply miners
with food and equipment on their way to the High
Country. Casto touted Mount Vernon as “the greatest
thoroughfare in Jefferson Territory,” the area that would become Colorado. Yet
after brief success, his hopes disappeared like a train into the night when the
new railroad bypassed his town. Now, the only sound of civilization at Mount
Vernon is the hum of traffic on Interstate 70, which passes half a mile from the
site but arrived 80 years too late to save the town.
The only evidence of Casto’s grandiose plans are two small cemeteries atop a
windswept hill. The story of Mount Vernon, like all ghost towns, has reached an
ending likely unimaginable to its founder—becoming nothing more than a lesson
in humility written to
future generations in
the Colorado dirt.
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Visit www.airtran.com for more information.
DENVER-AREA GHOST TOWNS ARE
WORTH THE SOMETIMES-BUMPY
ROADS REQUIRED TO REACH THEM.
HERE ARE THE BEST ROUTES:
CARIBOU
Take US 36 west to Boulder.
Turn left on CO 119/Canyon
Blvd. Drive 17 miles to
Nederland. In Nederland,
take the second exit in the
roundabout onto CO 72. Drive
1/2 mile, then turn left onto
CR 128. Continue on this
dirt road, which is rough in
places, for 5 miles. At 4 miles,
continue past two mines on
the left. At the top of the hill is
Caribou. (50 miles; 1 hour, 30
minutes from Denver)
TIGER
Take I-70 west to exit 203,
Breckenridge/Frisco. Take CO
9 south 7 miles and make a
left at the Tiger Road stoplight.
The Tiger town site is 5 miles
down this road, 1.8 miles
from the point where the road
turns to dirt.
Immediately
after crossing
a culvert,
look on the
hillside to
the right
for wooden
structures.
(85 miles;
1 hour, 45
minutes
from Denver)
Mount Vernon Cemetery
MOUNT VERNON
Take I-70 west to exit 259,
Morrison. Head south on CO
26, ending up on the south
side of I-70. Drive less than
1/4 mile and turn right at
Matthews/Winters Park.
Park and take the Village
Walk to Mount Vernon, 1 mile
roundtrip. Cross a stream and
climb to the top of the hill,
where you’ll see two fenced-in
cemeteries, the remains of
Mount Vernon. (20 miles; 25
minutes from Denver)
NEVADAVILLE
Take I-70 west to exit 243,
Central City Parkway. Take the
Parkway north for 8 miles. Just
before downtown Central City,
take a left onto Nevada Street
and climb a mile to Nevadaville.
(40 miles; 1 hour from Denver)
OCTOBER 2009 GO MAGAZINE
063