With warm weather on the horizon, it might be fun to visit Colorado ghost towns.This itinerary covers three of Colorado’s most well-known ghost towns: Ashcroft, Marble and Gothic. Total driving time is about 12 hours, and total distance is 507 miles, perfect for a three-day weekend.Ashcroft, Colo.Location: 10 miles south of Aspen, Colo., on Castle Creek RoadTours: Guided tours available in the summer, self-guided tours anytimeFee: $3 for adults, children under 10 free, and no dogs allowedContact: 970-925-5756Sitting in an alpine meadow at the foot of the Elk Mountains, Ashcroft is one of Colorado’s best-preserved ghost towns.Founded in 1879 by two prospectors from Leadville, Colo., Ashcroft was originally called Castle Forks City and then Chloride.The town came to be known as Ashcroft, a variation of Ashcraft, the name of a miner who made a major find.Access to Ashcroft was through Taylor Pass, where the wagons had to be disassembled and lowered over the cliffs.Within two weeks, the 24 miners who decided to devote their time and energy to mining for silver in the area formed a Miner’s Protective Association, built a courthouse and laid out streets. Miners paid $1 to draw for building lots.The town flourished from 1880 to 1883 and received its biggest boost from legendary investor Horace Tabor, who financed its mines and built a home there for his wife, Baby Doe.Legend has it that a 24-hour party was thrown for all the townspeople when Baby Doe came to visit.In its heyday, Ashcroft had about 2,000 residents, two newspapers, a school, a couple of sawmills, a small smelter and 20 saloons.The silver deposits soon proved shallow, and mines that initially produced 14,000 ounces of silver per ton played out. Ashcroft went bust by 1885.By the turn of the century, only a few aging bachelors lived in Ashcroft. Still owning mining claims, they occupied their days with hunting, fishing, reading and drinking at the town’s remaining saloon, Dan McArthur’s bar.Historian Jon Coleman calls these men “prospectors with dismal prospects, boosters with nothing to promote, and town fathers with no children.”In the 1930s, international sportsman Ted Ryan and his partner Billy Fiske, captain of America’s gold medal Olympic bobsled team, built the Highland-Bavarian Lodge near Ashcroft and planned a European-style ski resort with an aerial tramway up Mount Hayden. World War II put an end to their plans.In 1948, Stuart Mace, commander of a canine division during the war, settled his family in Ashcroft and started a dog sled business. Mace and his huskies were featured in the 1950s television series, Sergeant Preston of the Yukon, with Ashcroft as the backdrop.Today, Ashcroft remains a popular cross-country skiing destination.Marble, Colo.Location: Accessible by a paved road from State Highway 133With 131 residents, according to the 2010 census, Marble is not technically a ghost town, but it’s worth visiting for the marble-paved streets and seven buildings listed on the National Register of Historic Places.Marble’s first successful prospector, George Yule, was searching for silver, gold and lead when, in 1874, he discovered the mountain of pure white alabaster marble, for which the town is named.The first quarries opened in 1890 on Whitehouse Mountain. For years, blocks of marble were transported on the backs of burros or on horse-drawn sleighs in the winter.In 1907, a railroad company finally laid track to Marble, and the town boomed.Yule marble was shipped to San Francisco for use in civic buildings and to New York City, where it was used in the construction of the Equitable Building (an early skyscraper). The marble was also shipped to Washington, D.C., where it was used in the Lincoln Memorial and the Tomb of the Unknowns.The Tomb of the Unknowns required a single block weighing more than 100 tons to be extracted and then cut down to its 55-ton trimmed size.With the Great Depression in the 1930s, Marble’s fortunes declined; and, in 1941, the town suffered a mud avalanche. Higher shipping costs and the increased use of marble substitutes and veneers hastened the town’s demise.Since its acquisition in 2004 by Polycor, a Canadian stone company, the quarry has enjoyed a renaissance. Despite high transportation costs, Yule marble is now exported in large quantities to Europe and Asia and also sold in U.S. markets.Gothic, Colo.Location: 8 miles north of Crested Butte, Colo.Parking: free through May 31; permits are required June 1 through Aug. 24, when students arrive, putting parking at a premium.Set in a grassy meadow surrounded by towering peaks such as Treasury, Galena and Baldy; Gothic was named for the bare, gray mountain of rock that looms over the town.Gothic was founded in 1879 when miners swarmed into the area for the opening of the Sylvanite silver mine. By 1881, Gothic’s population reached 4,000 ñ all housed in rough-hewn cabins and tents, hotels and boarding houses.The town sported a dance hall and plenty of saloons and earned a reputation as a ìwickedî Wild West mining town, luring former President Ulysses S. Grant to visit in 1880. The citizens of Gothic greeted the former president by shooting their guns in the air.Gothic’s heyday was short, as miners found lots of quartz but not much else.Garwood H. Judd, a Gothic resident since 1880, never gave up, even as the town’s population dwindled. Known as the ìMayor of Gothicî and ìThe Man Who Stayed,î Judd remained until his death in 1930.In 1928, the former dean of Western State College in Gunnison, Colo., purchased the entire town for $200 in back taxes. The town is now home to the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory, and the old miners’ cabins are used to house biology students in the summer.
