I was out on another business trip, and this time it was Colorado Springs, Colorado. Colorado Springs is a beautiful city that rests up at the base of the Rocky Mountains. I was enchanted with its natural beauty compared to my life growing up on the east coast.
We finished with our work two days early, so I decided to drive deep into the Rocky Mountains to a town I used to visit as a kid, Crested Butte, Colorado.
Crested Butte is an old mining town, which are like many small towns located deep in the Rocky Mountains are. There were summer residents there before the first European explorers arrived under the command of John Gunnison arrived, who the town county Crested Butte is in is named after, along with the nearest town that has the only major airport closest to Crested Butte of Gunnison. John Gunnison and the settlers he brought with him were beaver trappers.
The Native American tribe was called Ute, and all evidence suggest they only spent Summers there, but once Europeans arrived they left the area for good.
It is a 4 hour drive from Colorado Springs. I drove over some of the most majestic mountains I have ever seen. The last hour of the drive is over Cottonwood Pass, which is over a mountain that’s peak is over 12,000 feet above sea level.
As I was driving up, I felt how out of shape I was. I had trouble breathing. I do not care how brave a person is, there is nothing scarier than searching for air and it not be there. I spent a few minutes on top of Cottonwood Pass and drove down to lower elevations to catch my breath.
I got to Crested Butte shortly after driving down from Cottonwood Pass, but my newfound oxygen was short lived. The town of Crested Butte sits at almost 9,000 feet above sea level. It was easier to breath, but a simple walk caused me to breath heavier than normal.
The town of Crested Butte is a quaint little town that has buildings that were constructed in the 1800s with a modern, progressive vibe to it. Many of the shops had gay pride flags on buildings that are over 100 years old. I found this aspect the most interesting.
One of the most famous landmarks in Crested Butte is called the Wooden Nickel, which is bar and tavern located off of main street Crested Butte. The Wooden Nickel was constructed around 1880. It had its named changed to Wooden Nickel in the early 1970s. The Wooden Nickel got painted purple a few years back, which may show the changing nature of Crested Butte.
After walking through the town of Crested Butte, I got in my rental car and drove out to the small town of Gothic. Gothic is a small town, which has no paved roads, that is deeper in the Rocky Mountains than Crested Butte is.
I drove out to get some GoPro footage of Gothic. Gothic was a small mining town created in 1879. Its main purpose of the time period was to mine for silver. It is now considered ghost town and is the site of the Rocky Mountain Biology lab.
I walked the ground of Gothic and got a sense of what life may have been life in the later nineteenth century. There is also one coffee shop in the ghost town that still operates today. There is a gay pride flag in this ghost town that is proudly displayed on this old coffee shop.
I will enclose some more footage of Gothic as I walked around. My trip this far into the Rocky Mountains was well worth it. I was only in the town for about 14hrs before I had to head back to Colorado Springs for a work related issue, but my trip out was so worth it. I also discovered some alone time was exactly what I needed for self care, along with the historical significance of the trip.
I highly recommend Crested Butte for those that want to see modern town that was founded during the silver and gold rushes of the late nineteenth century. You also see how the modern era has transformed this town into something that was not intended when it was created.
