Ghost Towns of Colorado: Your Guide to Colorado's Historic Mining Camps and Ghost Towns

by Philip Varney

Get ready for adventure as Philip Varney and John Drew take you on a tour of Colorado’s most fascinating historic mining camps and ghost towns. Ghost Towns of Colorado provides comprehensive information on more than 90 towns and sites from Cripple Creek to Leadville; from Silverton to Georgetown and Crested Butte to help you discover this engaging region for yourself. If you’re an armchair visitor, you’ll appreciate the rich color photos and descriptive text that bring the region to life; if you’re an actual visitor you’ll appreciate the directions and the many maps that make traveling the area a breeze. Chapters are arranged geographically by regions, and Varney provides precise directions and mileage to sites, plus information on what roads can be reached via car, truck, or 4-wheel drive. Philip Varney is also the author of Ghost Towns of Northern California. He has written books on ghost towns in Arizona and in Southern California. Photographer John Drew, along with his wife Susan, teamed up with Varney for Ghost Towns of Northern California. He has photographed ghost towns throughout the West.

Genres: Travel, History

160 pages, Paperback

First published July 17, 1999

Reviews

[Annie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is almost like a field guide-- it's all practicality. It tells you how to get to these sites, what conditions the roads are in (do you need a high clearance vehicle?), which buildings are too rickety to enter, whether the local attractions (scenic train rides, mine tours) are worthwhile.

It's also sensibly arranged by *region* rather than by age, name, or a random order, like many other Colorado ghost town books.

Really excellent for any new Colorado resident who wants to explore, or anyone planning a trip to CO.

[Kathy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This summer, we went to Colorado and visited over 50 of the sites mentioned in this book. Without it, we wouldn’t have been able to find some of them. And wonderfully, there are several sites that have been restored since this book was written! It was great to compare my own pictures with those in this book and see such efforts made in preserving history. We just loved this book.

[Peter Tillman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Where I first started visiting Western mining camps, on a series of summer jobs in college. My review of this book is paired with Varney's equally-splendid Arizona volume, https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
If you have any interest in Western mining history and touring what remains of the 19th and early 20th century mining camps, you need both of these books! High marks.

[Richard Edwards · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent review of ghost towns and the rise and fall of mining towns. My edition was the 1999 version. It is now twenty years old. Before actually traveling to the various ghost towns you need a good atlas like Benchmark or DeLorme.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lot of good, detailed information here for finding not only the towns, or what's left of them, but also the graveyards. The book was published in 1999 so some of the information about what is still assessable to the public may be outdated.