  Map Lulu City is the first of our ghost towns to carry the inevitable “city” in its formal title. Adding “city” to the name of any little group of four or five log cabins was a habit dear to the hearts of the pioneers who took part in the trans-Mississippi West movement. Filled with optimism, they envisaged any stopping place as a sure metropolis. Witness the number of minute settlements with the imposing adjunct dating even from 1858, the year before the gold rush to Colorado. For example there were Montana City, Denver City, Golden City and Boulder City. Of these the first settlement disappeared completely, and the three survivors dropped the grandiose appendage. Lulu City, like Montana City, is the disappearing type. In 1960 it was not completely gone, but almost. It was platted in 1879 by Ben F. Burnett who named the town for his oldest daughter. Lulu had only one good year, but hung on until 1883. After that a few die-hard prospectors remained. In the four years of Lulu City’s belief that its abundant silver ore would be rich, it had a large hotel, a store, several saloons, homes and a small red-light district. Mixed in with the silver ore found in the mines on the mountainsides to the west, was a little placer gold flecked through the sand of the long meadow. But neither the silver nor the gold were worth much. Lulu City’s post office was discontinued in January of 1886. According to Mary Cairns, whose 1946 book Grand Lake: The Pioneers pictured much more of Lulu City than can be seen today, one of the town’s prospectors was so discouraged he said: “Some day you’ll see nothing but a foot trail along this street. Raspberry bushes and spruce trees will be growing through the roof of the hotel yonder.” Unknown, 1889; D.P.L.
D.K.P., 1960
D.K.P., 1960 His prophecy has come true in full measure—only you can’t see the hotel at all! If you count carefully, you can discover the foundations of twenty-three buildings in the main part of town. Some five hundred feet farther north, there is a lone remote ruin in a grove on a point jutting west. This belonged to the town prostitute. Lulu City’s most distinctive relic is at the southern entrance to town—a former bear trap which gives Lulu City its uniqueness today. The town also had uniqueness in the past. It took part in one of the bloodiest county-seat wars in Colorado history, a war that resulted in the death of four men on July 4, 1883. This carnage was followed by the suicide of a sheriff and the escape of an undersheriff. Grand County, when created in 1874, was a very large county. Hot Sulphur Springs was the only settlement of any size in the area and was given the county seat. Shortly afterward, gold and silver were found in the mountains which led to the founding of Lulu City, Gaskill and Teller. This mountainous section decided that they should have the county seat and that it should be at Grand Lake. They agitated for an election on the change of county seat and won in 1881. Many antagonisms and animosities were built up in the course of this contest that kept on festering. Two years later one county commissioner By the time people on the hotel porch reached the ice house, two men were dead and two were dying, one of whom claimed he had been attacked by the deputy sheriff. The sheriff and the deputy sheriff fled. The deputy sheriff disappeared, and his end is unproved. Less than three weeks later in a hotel room in Georgetown, the sheriff committed suicide. Mystery still cloaks the cause of the actual shooting. Although no one of the six was a resident of Lulu City at the time of the tragedy, the undersheriff had been previously, and all the men had been visitors. The dismal affair sounded the death knell of Lulu City. Not many years afterward the many bears and mountain sheep had the townsite all to themselves, and the bears could laugh at Lulu City’s renowned trap.
D.K.P., 1960 |
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