Meanwhile Back at the Ranch...: Buckskin Gulch

I've been going through old photos and came across a picture of a gold arrastra we had visited in 1995. I asked my husband if he remembered where it was located and he (the man who remembers where every town in Colorado is, when we went there, what the weather was like, etc.) couldn't remember where it was located. He couldn't even remember seeing it before and claims he had never heard of an arrastra. For a moment I thought that maybe I was crazy - how could I remember that strange word 15 years later? Apparently, I was really impressed with this primitive way of crushing ore to extract gold. I "googled" arrastras in Colorado and soon found a picture online that matched my picture and found that it was located just a hop, skip and a jump from the "ranch".

So, last Friday morning we headed out over Wilkerson Pass, to Fairplay and on to Alma. The brochure said, "the 5-mile Buckskin Gulch tour begins in downtown Alma", but had no further instructions. Fortunately, the town of Alma is tiny and we found Buckskin Ave. and gave it a try. The brochure had 9 points of interest, but as luck would have it, the roadside markers were missing...until we came to No. 3...which was the gold arrastra! (I wasn't real thrilled with the murky water in it, but historically, it is just terribly interesting - the ingenuity of the miners was really amazing!!)

Just past the arrastra lies the Paris Mill. It is on private property, so we couldn't get very close to photograph it.

About 3 1/2 miles up the road you can see a natural treasure. Near to top of the mountain are 1000-year old bristlecone pines. These trees have survived because they are found in steep, inaccessible places.

We didn't continue the 5-mile drive to Kite Lake, we only went far enough to see the remains of the Sweet Home Mill. We drove back to Alma and continued North over Hoosier Pass to Breckenridge.

On Hoosier Pass we saw Baker's Tank, which served the Denver, South Park & Pacific narow gauge Railroad from Como to Leadville, The railroad had 63.83 miles of track and 435 curves. The longest straight piece of track was 1.6 miles. The railroad was completed in 1884 and abandoned in 1937. The tank was restored in 1958.