A self-guided audio walk through Georgetown, Colorado, the silver town once called the Silver Queen of the Rockies. On one corner of Sixth Street, William Cushman’s brick block has lost the top floor that once held his opera house; across the street, Louis Dupuy’s Hotel de Paris still stands with its furniture inside. Georgetown had two opera houses then, and the frail one two doors from the hotel is gone. Why did the hotel outlive both? The answer unfolds over ten stops: a banker who left town the day before his bank failed, a cook with a borrowed name who built in masonry beside a wooden theater that burned, volunteer firemen and the actors who saved their firehouse, the plant that kept a few mines running after the silver crash, a grocer whose family gave credit through hard times, a county court that sat temporarily in a bakery for a century, a silver baron’s house, a fire bell paid for on one condition, a church the wind knocked over, and a schoolhouse that grants and local donors brought back. Everything is told from public sidewalks; museums, churches, the courthouse and private buildings are not entered, and no tickets are sold or bundled. Attributed accounts are told as such, and every legend is labeled.
The stops
- The Cushman Block: The Missing Floor
- The Hotel de Paris: A New Name on an Old Bakery
- Town Hall: The Actors Who Saved a Firehouse
- The Hydro Plant: The Year the Lights Went Out
- Kneisel and Anderson: The Grocer Who Stayed
- The Old Courthouse: Temporary for a Century
- The Hamill House: A Cottage Made Grand
- Alpine Hose No. 2: A Bell on One Condition
- Grace Church: The Chapel the Wind Knocked Over
- The Old School: Brought Back
Finding the start
Start at the southwest corner of Sixth and Taos Streets in Georgetown’s historic downtown, facing the two-story brick block on the northwest corner.
Terrain and access
About 1.1 kilometers in a small mountain town at about 2,600 meters (8,500 feet) above sea level: take it slowly if you are not used to the altitude. No steps; gentle slopes. Sidewalks throughout (those on Fifth and Taos Streets are mapped but not yet checked on foot). Crosswalks at Sixth and Taos, Sixth and Rose and Sixth and Argentine. Snow and ice are likely from late fall to spring. No admissions. The walk ends two blocks north of where it starts.
Tickets
Nothing on the route needs a ticket.
The hotel is a museum with its own hours and admission; going in is optional and not part of this walk.
Keep going
What you get
- An email from [email protected] with a link and an access code.
- Use it on your phone or tablet in an up-to-date web browser, no app store needed. There is no account to set up before you start.
- Download it on Wi-Fi before you go. After that it works offline: audio, text, map and pictures.
- Your booking includes 2 phones, so two of you can follow along, each on your own. Extra phones are $2.95 each, or a group can share one phone on its speaker.
- Play, pause and replay every part, skip back and ahead, or change the playback speed. Keep the screen on or tap play at each stop.
How it was made
Every fact in the narration is checked against a cited source, and legends are told as legends. The narration is written from that research. How our tours are made.
Image credits
- John Margolies, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
- Photo: Jeffrey Beall, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (license)
- Smallbones, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
- Photo: Jeffrey Beall, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (license)
- Photo: Don Graham, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons (license)
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