Georgetown displays Colorado’s best china and finest crystal. Hardly a mere “mining camp,” it has an elegance and a refinement that few other towns can match. Up the hill from Georgetown is Silver Plume, whose architecture may lack the finesse of its sister to the east, but its main street looks like what people expect from the frontier American West.
Brothers George and David Griffith, farmers from Bourbon County, Kentucky, headed to the newly discovered gold fields of Colorado in 1859 only to find that the best claims around Central City and Idaho Springs were already taken. So they prospected farther west up Clear Creek where, in June of the same year, they found placer gold. They staked a claim and established the Griffith Mining District. Their gold discovery, however, was to be the only important one in the district.
The Fish Block, built in 1889 by banker Charles Fish, stands at the corner of Sixth and Rose streets. Behind it stands the 1891 Masonic Hall.
As others joined them, a camp grew, known as George’s Town (named after the older brother). A second community, called Elizabethtown (probably named for the Griffiths’ sister), came to life south of the first camp when silver was discovered there in 1864. These were the first mines in Colorado in which silver was mined as the principal ore, not as a lesser byproduct to gold.
In 1868, Georgetown and Elizabethtown consolidated as one community. That same year, Georgetown displaced Idaho Springs as the seat of Clear Creek County in a bitter election. By 1870, the population had climbed to eight hundred, and Georgetown settled in as “Queen of the Silver Camps.” (Leadville, featured on pages 48–55, was to become the “King.”) In that year, Georgetown citizens presented a silver spike to commemorate the rail link between Denver and Cheyenne that joined Colorado to the Union Pacific Railroad and therefore to the rest of the nation.
By 1880, the population of Georgetown had soared to more than three thousand. The town had schools, churches, and hotels, as well as one saloon for every one hundred and fifty citizens. Four independent fire companies helped the community avoid a major conflagration.
In 1893, however, disaster of another variety hit Georgetown. A steady decline in silver prices, due to increased supply and decreased coinage, culminated in the repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act. This act had guaranteed acquisition of almost nine million ounces of silver per month by the federal government. Its repeal meant that the coin of the realm was gold—and only gold. This was a major blow, not just to Georgetown but to the entire state; at the time, Colorado had been producing an astonishing 58 percent of the nation’s silver. Mines and mills closed, and miners departed to gold fields in Cripple Creek and Victor (see chapter 2, pages 60–67). Georgetown went into a precipitous decline.
Not until the middle of the twentieth century did Georgetown bloom once again, this time as a mountain retreat and tourist attraction. It and Silver Plume were declared a National Historic Landmark District, and both civic groups and private individuals began in earnest to restore their lovely towns.
A delicate fountain and a solarium demonstrate the stately elegance of the Hamill House, an 1867 home that was extensively remodeled in 1878 and 1879 to become Georgetown’s most elaborate residence. The stone building in the rear is the carriage house–stable.
The Gothic Revival–style six-hole outhouse at the Hamill House features a cantilevered overhang above its two entrances and a ventilating cupola.
The dining room of Georgetown’s Hamill House. The 1879 original wallpaper had to be hand-painted after a 1974 fire caused smoke and water damage. The Renaissance Revival sideboard (left, rear) and the dining table are Hamill family originals.
WALKING AND DRIVING AROUND GEORGETOWN
As you enter Georgetown’s historic district, turn left across Clear Creek and right on Rose Street, one of the two major residential avenues in Georgetown. (Taos Street, one block east, is the other.) Both streets have home after lovely home, whether modest or extravagant, featuring a wide variety of nineteenth-century architectural styles.
Rose Street leads to downtown, which you will want to tour by foot, not car. Start at the Community Center, formerly the 1868 courthouse, at Sixth and Argentine streets. There you can pick up brochures and a free walking tour map. (However, a more helpful tour guide on Georgetown and Silver Plume is for sale.) Historic photos are on display in the first-floor courtroom, where district court was held. The county courtroom, jury deliberation rooms, and public restrooms are upstairs.
Sixth Street contains too many fine commercial structures to enumerate here. If you go inside only one, visit the marvelous Hotel de Paris.
The grand hotel was brought into being by Frenchman Adolphe Francois Gerard, who immigrated to New York in 1868 at age twenty-two and headed west with the U.S. Cavalry. He deserted in Cheyenne, came to Denver in 1869, and changed his name to Louis Dupuy.
In 1873, Dupuy was working as a miner in Georgetown when he was injured in a dynamite explosion. He retired from mining and bought a small bakery, which over the years evolved into one of the finest hotels in the West. With Dupuy as owner and master chef, the Hotel de Paris served elegant dinners on Haviland china and featured gas lights, elaborately carved black walnut furniture, and hot and cold running water in each guest room—an almost unheard-of luxury.
Louis Dupuy died in 1900 at age fifty-six. He willed the hotel to his longtime housekeeper and friend Sophie Gally, who had also immigrated from France. She survived him by little more than five months. They are buried side by side in the Alvarado Cemetery north of town.
The Colonial Dames of America purchased the hotel in 1954 and began a thorough restoration. Touring the Hotel de Paris is a delight, from its guest rooms to wine cellar to kitchen to dining room to Dupuy’s own quarters.
Across the street from the Hotel de Paris stands the 1866 Star Hook and Ladder Firehouse, now the town hall.
South of the main business district, on Fifth Street just west of Taos, is the 1874 Alpine Hose Company No. 2, which at this writing is being completely renovated. A sign announcing the remodel calls the building “the principal visual and historical symbol of Georgetown.”
Some might argue that symbol is on Fourth Street, just east of Taos. The 1870 Maxwell House, a private residence closed to the public, is considered one of the country’s ten best Victorian homes.
One residence open to the public and well worth touring is the opulent Hamill House, located at 305 Argentine Street, two blocks west of the Maxwell House.
A fairly modest home when it was constructed in 1867, the house became a showplace when it was remodeled and expanded in 1879 by its new owner, William A. Hamill, a prominent mine owner and silver speculator. The elegant Gothic mansion features a solarium, a schoolroom, and such refinements as central heating, a zinc-lined bathtub, and gold-plated doorknobs.
The Hamill House also has Colorado’s most elaborate outhouse, a Gothic-styled six-seater with a cantilevered overhang above the entrance and a ventilating cupola. Later preservationists found pieces of expensive china, apparently broken by maids or scullions and dropped into the privy to conceal their clumsiness.
As mentioned earlier, Rose and Taos streets feature many exquisite private homes. Also on Taos are the 1869 wood-frame Grace Episcopal Church; the 1918 brick Catholic church; and the lovely, multisteepled, stone Presbyterian church, built between 1872 and 1874 (and the only Georgetown church in continuous service since its construction). Across the street from the Presbyterian church is the 1874 two-story Georgetown Public School (elementary grades on the first floor, high school on the second), which proudly asserts that it is a “State of Colorado Standard School Approved Class.” At this writing, the school is being completely restored.
Also on Taos Street, across from the city park, is the Old Missouri Firehouse, built in 1875 to protect the north end of town.
If you wish to visit Georgetown’s cemetery, drive toward the interstate onramp, but instead of going onto Interstate 70, proceed 3.2 miles north on Alvarado Road, which loosely parallels the highway.
The First United Presbyterian Church was dedicated upon its completion in 1874 after two years of construction. It was completely restored in 1974 to celebrate its centennial.
The Alvarado Cemetery will be on your right with a conspicuous main gate. On the other side of the road is the old Georgetown Cemetery, which was relocated to this site in 1972 from the shore of Georgetown Lake.
The Alvarado Cemetery, like many large graveyards, is divided into sections for religious and fraternal groups. Hundreds of graves cover many acres, with considerable space between various sections. One of the first graves you will see, near a flagpole, is for David Griffith, the cofounder of Georgetown, who died in 1882.
In the Catholic section are the graves of Louis Dupuy, the celebrated owner of the Hotel de Paris, and his housekeeper, Sophie Gally. The headstone features two birds looking at each other and the inscription Deux Bon Amis (Two Good Friends).
To find Dupuy and Gally’s graves, go about twenty yards from the main entrance and veer to the right about twelve yards toward a wrought-iron fence enclosing a grave. Beyond that, follow a road heading toward an aspen grove. About sixty-five yards from the wrought-iron fence, you will come to a large obelisk for William Spruance. Behind it and to the left is a bullet-shaped, terra cotta–colored marker about six and a half feet high for Dupuy and Gally.
WHEN YOU GO
Georgetown is 11.6 miles west of Idaho Springs and about 40 miles west of downtown Denver on Interstate 70.
The Georgetown Loop Railroad and Lebanon Silver Mine Tour
If you plan to ride only one tourist steam train in Colorado, consider this one. It is more affordable than the two deservedly famous trains in southern Colorado—the Durango & Silverton and the Cumbres & Toltec—and it is much shorter, so you need not relinquish a full day. Completed in 1884, the route travels four and a half miles to cover the two-mile distance between Georgetown and Silver Plume, gaining 638 feet in the process. It also traverses one of the more remarkable railroad sights in the West: the three-hundred-foot-long Devil’s Gate High Bridge, where the route passes almost a hundred feet above its own tracks below.
Even if you decide not to ride the railroad, at least drive out to the Georgetown end to see the impressive bridge through Devil’s Gate. Occasionally, when the steam engines are being serviced, a vintage diesel engine from the 1940s pulls the train
In addition, if you haven’t toured a mine, consider adding the Lebanon Silver Mine Tour for a slightly increased cost. Mine tours in other parts of the state routinely cost twice the price of the Lebanon, but you cannot tour the Lebanon mine without taking the Georgetown train. This tour is unusual in that when the mine was abandoned in the 1890s, it was left with its machinery intact. As a result, the Lebanon remains like a time capsule of a rather primitive form of mining not usually seen in mine tours. The rough terrain to the mine and the route within, however, make this a poor choice for those unsure of foot.
When steam engines are being serviced, as they were for the 2008 season, a 1940s-vintage diesel engine pulls the observation cars. Here it crosses the high bridge at Devil’s Gate.