Jeep Trails to Colorado Ghost Towns [Paperback]

Robert L. Brown (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 1963

Distributed by the University of Nebraska Press for Caxton Press

Settle into your 4-wheel-drive vehicle or a chair and take off for the mining camps of Colorado!  This book is an illustrated history of 59 towns famous during the gold and silver rushes of the 1800's, with directions on how to get to each.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"For those who wish to explore the many ghost towns of beautiful Colorado, there is an excellent book that provides all of the above. Jeep Trails To Colorado Ghost Towns by Robert L. Brown is an excellent guide to many of the old ghost towns and mining areas which once dominated a portion of Colorado. In this guide, one finds helpful descriptions, histories, and photographs. I used Brown''s book on a recent exploratory trip into the Colorado Rockies and, on arriving at each and every site I selected to visit, I felt I knew it intimately as a result of studying this guide."—Treasure Facts

(Treasure Facts )

About the Author

Robert L. Brown was a teacher of Western and Colorado history in the Denver School System for thirty-three years and later at the Denver Center of the University of Colorado.  He has published a number of guide books focusing on Colorado history including Colorado On Foot (1991) and Ghost Towns of the Colorado Rockies (1968), both published by Caxton Press.

Product Details

• Paperback: 245 pages
• Publisher: Caxton Press (January 1, 1963)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0870040219
• ISBN-13: 978-0870040214
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,048,360 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good for picking out sites of interest., March 28, 2005

By 

Karen K. Hart (Austin, MN United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Jeep Trails to Colorado Ghost Towns (Paperback)

This book may have been the first gift my husband ever gave me, so I may be inclined to go easy on it. It is true that the book is outdated and that some of the sites and trails it describes have changed considerably since publication. We also found that the description of how to get to one of the ghost towns was inadequate--we happened on the remains of some buildings eventually, but that was sheer luck; we'd given up on finding the town and were headed back from our trip.

However, the book told us a lot about locations of potential interest, and we've had a lot of fun checking out places we never would have known about otherwise. It's nice to have older pictures to compare to what we see, and Brown offers great summaries of places we may want to learn more about.

I'd definitely recommend this book--just make sure you have supplemental information to avoid frustration while navigating.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Nostalgic fourwheeling, January 4, 2000

By 

John Carroll (England, UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Jeep Trails to Colorado Ghost Towns (Paperback)

I bought this book while on vacation in Colorado. Other reviewers suggest that it is out of date and certainly there are more explicit trail guides to this State but it's a great piece of nostalgia. I love the pictures of flatfender CJs when they were almost new and ghost towns before the weather took away many of the buildings. It sits alongside other vintage Jeep books in my house.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Oldie but Goodie, February 15, 2004

By 

George Pennington (Palmer Lake, Co United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Jeep Trails to Colorado Ghost Towns (Paperback)

Robert L. Brown is one of the pioneers of the rediscovery and the history of Colorado's Ghost Towns. While this book was written in the mid 60's and is woefully out of date as a current guide, it does offer a unique perspective because of it's age. You will find here photos of the way these towns looked at the time the book was originally published. As a student of Colorado history, I find these invaluable. Comparing the current state of these towns to Brown's photos and historical photos of these towns in their heydey allows you to appreciate their fragility and their rate of decline. Don't buy this book as a guide, but buy it for it's historical perspective.