Here, another word of warning: there are almost no ghost towns any more. In the true sense of the word they are gone. If you had been able to ride a horse or were willing to punish your Model T Ford, I could have taken you in the 1920's to dozens of true ghost towns no farther away than along the Front Range. Even in the late 1940's, when jeeps first came in, I could still have guided you to many true ghost towns. But no more.
What has happened? Tourists (a mixed blessing) and natives who have no regard for Colorado's appealing past, have stolen from them, vandalized them, destroyed buildings, and carted whole towns away. Another killer in the form of fierce high-country winters has levelled them under tons of heavy white snow or pulled them apart with snatching, tearing wind. Whether desecrated by humans or eroded by nature, I am constantly reminded of Charles Kingsley's lines, painted on the Tabor Grand Theatre curtain:
_So fleet the works of men, back to the earth again,_ _Ancient and holy things fade like a dream._
In other cases the ghost towns have undergone a metamorphosis. Some settlements have changed into summer resorts because of the charm of their buildings or the picturesqueness of their settings. Sometimes their ghost town status was lost by a new industry moving in, such as the sawmill at Lenado; or a new motor road has been strategically built, such as the Peak-to-Peak Highway which redeemed Ward. These towns, although peopled only by ghosts for many years, once again throb with life today. Many of the summer-resort group are alive only in the warm months. When the aspens have lost their fluttering gold in the autumn, they return to ghost towns.
We have included some of each type. All were true ghost towns once, and all had ghostly reminders still extant in 1960. But if you, as you visit them, should fail to leave everything as you find it, there will soon be nothing left for anyone to see. A sad and forlorn example of what can happen in only a short time is the formerly beautiful Lee House at Capitol City. When I first saw it in 1955, the house was still a true mansion, and its atmosphere eerily evoked the great and pretentious dreams of its builder. But in 1960 despoiling tourists had changed it to a horrid ruin.