Gold Country - Colorado Springs, CO - 10,495 Miles

We turned the hour drive from Denver to Colorado Springs into six hours by making another loop into the Rockies. On the map it looked like the town of Fairplay would be a good destination. Just when I thought I'd seen all possible different landscapes, we crested a ridge after climbing to 10,000 feet and before us were flatlands stretching for miles in every direction. Cows grazed and barns dotted the countryside. It looked like rural Illinois except for the distant mountains surrounding it and we were 9000 feet higher.

The area is in Park county. Fairplay is the county seat in the southern part of the county so the area is known as.....wait for it..... South Park. I had assumed the TV show was based on a fictional town in Colorado, but it really exists. We saw the South Park elementary school (but no Cartman, Kenny, Stan, or Kyle). Many of the businesses had South Park in their name long before the TV show existed.
















We toured South Park City. It's a collection of buildings from the turn of the century or earlier from various towns and ghost towns in the area. During that period the region was at its height of gold mining operations. It was a project of, as you might expect, the South Park Historical Society.























Today, starting from Colorado Springs, we looped around the back side of Pike's Peak to visit the old mining towns of Victor and Cripple Creek. At its peak about 475 mines operated between the two towns. Only one still operates so opportunities abound to see abandoned mining operations.















Victor had about 12,000 residents at its peak. Today it has less than 500. Looking at the dates on the downtown buildings it seems the majority were built in 1899. They all still exist but most are vacant and the town is virtually unchanged since that time.
















After Victor we went to Cripple Creek. We had visited both towns nearly 20 years ago. Victor was the same as I remembered but Cripple Creek was nearly unrecognizable. Shortly after our last visit a law was passed allowing casinos in Cripple Creek. That created a building boom of new casinos and hotels. In addition many of the old buildings were gutted except for the exterior walls to accommodate casinos and hotel rooms. A large number of the historic building were simply torn down. The hillsides that were covered with abandoned mines and miner's cabins on our last visit were now spotted with condos and new homes. I'm sure the people in town are much better off than they were 20 years ago, but to me the town has become much less interesting.