Colorado has many old mining towns, and when mining came to an end they had little money for modernisation so their old buildings survived. Elsewhere we have brief coverage of mining towns such as Aspen, Crested Butte, Ouray and Silverton. We decided that we should give the full page treatment to a typical mining town, and the lucky winner was Georgetown together with its near neighbour Silver Plume. Georgetown nestles in a valley in the Rockies at an elevation of 2,600 metres (8,500 feet). It was established as a mining village 1859 but the mining boom turned to a bust in 1893 resulting in the decline that has preserved its historic district. Georgetown is not a ghost town but a living town full of genuine old buildings.
Dining room of Hotel De Paris
A building that still stands proudly on 6th Street is the Hotel de Paris. Opened in 1875 by Frenchman Louis Dupuy it became known as one of the finest hotels in the west. Following Dupuy’s death in 1900 the hotel began to decline and by the 1930s it was operating as a boarding house. It closed in 1939. In 1954 the building was purchased by the National Society of Colonial Dames of America in Colorado who have restored it back to the way it would have looked in Dupuy’s days and opened it as a museum. Click Tab 2 for a picture of the exterior taken way back in 1988, hence the 1980s cars parked outside.
Georgetown
Cushman Bank & 6th Street
The Georgetown-Silver Plume National Historic District covers both Georgetown and nearby mining town of Silver Plume. 6th Street is the heart of Georgetown’s Historic District. This picture taken in 1988 shows the Victorian buildings lining the street with the Cushman Bank building on the right. When we visited in 2008 we found that some new buildings have been added to the next block, but they have been designed to blend in with the original buildings.
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Georgetown Loop Railroad
When the Colorado Central Railroad from Denver connected Georgetown with Silver Plume in 1884 it offered a spectacular journey. The towns are only 3 kilometres (2 miles) apart, but Silver Plume is 195 metres (640 feet) higher. To keep the gradient within the limits of a conventional railroad, the line had to loop round and pass over itself on the Devil’s Gate Viaduct, a 29 metre (95 foot) high curved trestle. The 0.91 metre (3 foot) gauge line was dismantled in 1938 but in 1984 it was reconstructed by the Colorado Historical Society. In season The Georgetown Loop Railroad operates steam or diesel hauled journeys from just outside Georgetown to Silver Plume via the viaduct . Click Tab 2 to see the viaduct from below.
Georgetown from Devils Gate
Georgetown was named after George Griffith, who with his brother David founded the town of George’s Town in 1859 during the first Colorado Gold Rush. At the height of the mining boom the population exceeded 10,000 but in 1893 the silver mining boom turned into a collapse and the town began to shrink. With a population of just over 1,000, Georgetown is still alive, but has plenty of buildings from the Victorian era.
Main Street, Silver Plume
Silver Plume was settled in 1870 to support two local mines, The Pelican and The Dive. The mines were very close to one another and apparently their owners had regular fights over alleged encroachments on ‘their’ vein underground. Silver Plume’s part of the joint National Historic District has a more rough and ready feel than Georgetown partly due to the unsurfaced (unpaved) roads. With many visitors arriving on the Georgetown Loop Railroad, we found relatively few cars obstructing the views of the old buildings. As a result it is easy to imagine that you are back in the mining heyday of the town.
Georgetown Town Hall
Georgetown’s Town Hall is clearly old, but internet searches have failed to reveal its history. Nearby is a building that was constructed in 1869 by city attorney and developer John McMurdy. In 1876 McMurdy sold the building to Jacob Snetzer who operated a tailors shop from the premises until his death in 1913. Click Tab 2 to see the Snetzer Building.
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© Mike Elsden 1981 - 2025
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