Unique Ghost Towns and Mountain Spots :: From Steamboat Springs

From Steamboat Springs

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Hahns Peak is the lowest in altitude of our selected towns—8,163 feet—and the farthest north—almost to the Wyoming line. It is now solely a summer resort, but a summer resort fully conscious of its mining history. Two monuments fill a grassy plot in its main street.

One is a large hose nozzle which bears a plaque commemorating the work that the “little giant” (as the nozzle was called) did in a former placer operation. The other reads in part: “This monument is dedicated in honor of Joseph Hahn and other pioneers of this great basin. In the summer of 1862, Joseph Hahn, and two unknown companions discovered gold at the foot of this great peak....” After the Civil War Hahn returned with two friends who named the peak for Hahn. In the spring of 1867, while Hahn was returning to Empire for supplies, he died in Middle Park of exhaustion.

Most of Hahns Peak’s production was placer gold, and close to $1,000,000 was extracted around 1901. Previously in the 1870’s the placers were worked with almost no profit because of the cost of building three ditches. There was also a silver-lead mine high on Hahns Peak, the Tom Thumb.

The most amazing bit of the town’s history occurred in the winter of 1898 when Hahns Peak (then the seat of Routt County) was the scene of a real “Wild West” TV script. Sheriff Charles Neiman, after a sensational and tricky chase, succeeded in incarcerating two outlaws, Harry Tracy and David Lant, in the Hahns Peak jail. By a ruse they escaped, leaving the sheriff for dead; were recaptured and escaped again. The astounding story is told with full details by Wilson Rockwell in Sunset Slope and gives Hahns Peak its unique TV character.

Unknown, 1902; D.P.L.

HAHNS PEAK COMMEMORATES ITS FOUNDER

The store at the left is labeled C. E. Blackburn, General Merchandise. Blackburn was in business there during 1902 and ’03. In 1904 he was also postmaster. Previously the same building had held the bank. The large building in the center of the photograph (with two windows facing this way) was the Larson Hotel. The three-roofed building was the courthouse. It obscures the jail which stood behind it in 1898, in a direct line with Hahns Peak. On a night that was twenty-eight degrees below zero, Lant and Tracy, outlaws and escapees from the Utah penitentiary, beat and bound the sheriff and left him senseless in the jail. They crossed the street to the livery stable and stole the tired stage team. Courageously captured a second time by the same sheriff, the outlaws escaped again and left Colorado. Details of their story make a thriller. The upper photo was taken by a panoramic camera and makes the main street appear much wider than it really is. It also diminishes the height of Hahns Peak in the background. A number of buildings are identical but appear different because of the two types of cameras. Poverty Bar, the placer and flat which was worked with hydraulic hoses and yielded close to a half million dollars, is off to the left behind the Blackburn Store in the upper photo and the school house in the lower. Herman Mahler, Hahns Peak’s oldest resident, worked the placer around 1913. In 1960 he was still faithful to the town for five months of the year. Hahns Peak is completely deserted through the long harsh winter months.

D.K.P., 1960

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