1/31/09

We took a short road trip out to Central City and Black Hawk, CO on Saturday. We had heard rumors of a casino town there, and we were not disappointed. Genuinely astounded would be a better phrase, as Black Hawk springs out at you from the mining and forested landscape with a skyscraper-sized hotel. We drove for several miles seeing nothing but hills, pine trees and the occasional abandoned mine, when suddenly we came around a bend and WHAM! There was this set of large, modern hotels, right in them there hills.

The contrast between old and new was phenomenal, with the strange, concrete hotels/casinos (Vegas Style, with names like Fortune Valley and Fitzgeralds) intermingled with Victorian homes built in the 1800s. On the main drag in Central City, only one building that was there in 1860 is no longer there; the rest is all authentic and restored to cater to the bus loads of old gamblers making their ways up from Denver and Boulder. There is a fancy, old-fashioned opera house with a thriving theater company that operates in the summer, a county courthouse unchanged since the 1800s and still in operation, and even a brew-pub with award-winning brews.

Jonmikel was in love instantly, and has decided to move there. It was a little to backcountry for me, but it was still pretty neat to see...

One from Jonmikel... the Downtown of Central City

No idea, but its outside the County Court House

Downtown Central City... notice the big bare spot that is an old gold mine in the background

Kind of out of place in the backcountry of Colorado...

Because everybody needs a donkey outside their courthouse!