If you have read this far, we hope that you have attempted one or more of the short trips. Perhaps you have done the whole suggested tour around Colorado and seen all forty-two of our selections. Whichever you have attempted, you must have come away awe-struck by the prodigious energy and enterprise of the pioneers. Their feats of transportation over villainous terrain, and of building shaft houses, dwellings and even towns on the face of cliffs or at the top of mountains, were so herculean as to seem incredible.

The pioneers’ amazing accomplishments lie crumbling now. What cost them so much are largely regarded today as mere relics for curiosity or spots for souvenir-hunting—an attitude that raises my blood pressure to the danger mark. No one would think of chipping off a piece of tile from a fireplace in Spain or a bit of wood from a Tudor cottage in England. Yet they will do the equivalent in Colorado.

True, our past and our heritage are much closer to us here, but they should be no less dear. For my part, they are even dearer for being just around memory’s corner and being almost within touch. When I stand on the rock dams of Lake Caroline (which my father named for me) and think of what effort a man would need to expend, working alone at 11,800 feet altitude with only a couple of hired workmen and a team of horses to build these dams, I cannot bear for one rock to be dislodged.

There were not only the rock dams of Lake Caroline but the concrete and rock dams of Ice, Ohman, Steuart, and Reynolds Lakes and the great earthen dam of Loch Lomond, the main lake of the reservoir system. I cannot remember the actual building of these dams; but I can remember the many horseback rides in later summers when my father and I went to check on the head gates and on what serious damage the severe winters had done to his engineering work.

And then there were those many shaft houses that I knew as a child and girl where my father was the consulting mining engineer. I cannot remember the shaft houses being built; but I can remember them later with the whir of the hoists, the sharp sound of the bell signals, and the clang of the primitive ore buckets and go-devils as they took us down the shafts. I can remember the speed of the go-devil in the Little Jonny mine near Leadville when in 1927 John Cortellini (then mayor of the town and superintendent of the mine) ushered us down with his courtly Italian manner. He expected me to be frightened at being brushed so rapidly past the crooked rock wall. But I thought it was fun.

I do not think it is fun today when I hear that the silent and deserted Little Jonny shaft house has been broken into and some of the machinery stolen. I know at what human and financial cost that machinery was put there. It should be left in peace until that rosy day when precious minerals and base metals are once again in demand.

Speaking of cost, no visitor to our collection of towns but must have wondered about finances. Only a gambler could understand them. It is my private contention that more money has been sunk into the mountains of Colorado than any wealth they have yielded up. But this is the practical and prosaic view of one who has heard too often about the millions that would pour in tomorrow when the vein widened out or when the drift was extended just ten more feet. Mining and narrow gauge railroading were for gamblers, and no one pretended otherwise. They had no illusions about its being an industry or a business. My father and his cronies always spoke of “the mining game.”

But for a game it carried a deal of heartbreak. If you take time to look at the cemeteries of the mining towns, you cannot fail to notice the numbers of babies who could not survive in this harsh land nor the number of young men killed by accidents other than shootings, nor in the “Boot Hills” the number of unhappy young women who went the laudanum route. There is sadness, as well as serenity and romantic nostalgia, hanging in the aura of these high-country towns.

Memories of humor—raw pioneer humor—hang there also. The old-timers used their boundless energy for play and for practical jokes as well as for work. I remember a passage from the Silver World that was written about Eureka in April, 1877, which pictured their superhuman efforts at entertainment. A dance had been scheduled in one of the cabins, according to the correspondent who described the affair thus:

“Soon the damsels began to arrive, some on burros and some on foot. The music was provided by a fiddle and a banjo, and the ball opened with the ‘San Juan Polka’ which resembled a Sioux War dance.... Soon the ironclads of the miners began to raise the dust of the floor so that before long it was impossible to tell what was what.... Ground hog was the chief dish at the late supper which also served big ox, gravy, bacon, coffee, tea, and a large variety of pies and cakes. After this light repast the dance was resumed till morning.”

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And so, farewell, for the present. Let us hope that in the years to come both humans and nature will be kind to the high-country towns so that we may all continue to enjoy these reminders of a way of life that is now completely lost—a way of life that was the mainstay of Colorado for over half a century and is now only a mountain ghost.