Customer Reviews

Ghost Towns, Colorado Style: Central Region

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I love this book. It is very extensive. There are 3 volumes in this series- this one (which is Volume 2), plus Volume 1 (Northern region) and Volume 3 (Southern region...

What is nice is that these books are pretty updated (1999). Some of the Colorado ghost town books that I have looked at are very outdated- published around the 1970's.

This book (as well as the other 2 in the series) are very thick books-this one has 616 pages!)
It is packed full of infomation.
Some ghost town books leave some of the smaller, lesser-known ghost towns out- but these 3 volumes have them all!

There are black and white photos for each ghost town- plus the fascinating history behind each one. Some even have updated information listed about the town- such as how the Ghost town of Guffey (originally called Freshwater)once had a dog as Mayor-and they now have a cat as Mayor!! (This is true).

In this book- Volume 2- Central Region- it includes these counties:
Eagle, Garfield, Pitkin, Park, Lake, Teller, Chaffee and Gunnison.
The ghost towns listed are NUMEROUS- but here are just some of them:

Redstone, Ruby, Ashcroft, Aspen (once called "Ute City"), Carbondale, Emma, Dotsero, Independence, Gilman, Gold Park, Cripple Creek, Altman, Anaconda and Mound City, Tabor City, Dayton, Guffey, Fairplay, Buckskin Joe, Como,
White Pine, Tincup, Sargents, Quartz, Pitkin, Ohio City, Pieplant,Marble, Irwin, Iola, Gothic. Crystal, Crested Butte,
Romley, St. Elmo, Monarch, Buena Vista, Garfield, and etc.....

There are many, many more towns in this book- I just can't list them all!

I live in the heart of Ghost town country. I knew about some of them, but the place is rotten with them; and this book located these bits of bygone history for me. Even my old office building sits on the bones of an old ghost town I'd never heard of. If you love Colorado (and you should) and history and adventure and beautiful back country driving and hiking, this book is the one you want. Buy it and carry it with you. I've seen others and this is by far the most complete and up to date.
-P-

I own all three of Mr. Jessen's books about Colorado ghost towns. Each is comprehensive and thorough when describing the history of the individual towns. I am amazed that this history is so complete. I lived in Summit County for 6 years and used it as my base to travel to many of the towns mentioned in Mr Jessen's books. Some of these town sites are sparse, barren or long forgotten. How Mr Jessen was able to reconstruct their history is amazing to me. Thank God for historians like Mr Jessen for taking the time to write the history of these long forgotten pioneers and the places they called home. There are so many stories in these volumes that I keep them handy and read and re-read the stories over and over again. My particular favorite stories are those recounting the adventures of the colorful individuals who populated these towns back in the day! It always reminds me that we are not so different than our forefathers, we just have better technology!