A self-guided audio walk through Idaho Springs, Colorado, where the gold rush in the Rockies took off, following the water that made the town and kept costing it. Start where Chicago Creek meets Clear Creek and George Jackson, alone in the snow in January 1859, found his nugget in the ninth cup of thawed gravel. Then walk Miner Street: the 1878 hose house and the Carnegie library that grew out of the women’s clubs, the house with two front doors that a widow hoped would never become a tavern, the Mining Exchange and the summer of 1903, when a crowd marched striking miners out of town, and the schoolhouse the town moved and defended in the Colorado Supreme Court. Along the Clear Creek Greenway come Charlie Tayler’s waterwheel below Bridal Veil Falls and the foot of Soda Creek Road, where hot water drove a father and son out of their mine shaft and a doctor turned it into a bath business. The walk ends below the Argo Mill, at the mouth of the tunnel built to drain the mines, where a flood killed four men in 1943 and where the water is still treated today. Everything is told from public sidewalks and the public Greenway; the museums, the hot springs and the Argo Mill are seen from outside only, and no tickets are sold or bundled.

The stops

1. The Ninth Cup
2. Fire Carts and Books
3. Two Doors on Miner Street
4. The Exchange and the Summer of 1903
5. A Schoolhouse on the Move
6. The Wheel by the Falls
7. The Shaft That Filled with Hot Water
8. The Water That Never Stopped

Finding the start

Start on the Clear Creek Greenway footbridge beside the Highway 103 bridge, just south of Interstate 70 exit 240 at the west end of Idaho Springs: from Miner Street, walk south on the 13th Avenue (Highway 103) sidewalk under the interstate, about 300 meters.

Terrain and access

About 2.5 kilometers, step-free and nearly level, on paved sidewalks and the paved Clear Creek Greenway with two footbridges. Getting to the start and leaving it, you cross the Interstate 70 on- and off-ramps beside Highway 103: use the signals. Other street crossings are on Miner Street at 14th, 15th and 17th Avenues and at the busy junction of Miner Street, Colorado Boulevard and Soda Creek Road. The last stretch drops gently from Colorado Boulevard to a footbridge (not yet checked on foot). Interstate 70 runs beside the Greenway, so it is noisy there. Do not walk up Soda Creek Road (no sidewalk under the interstate) and stay off the creek banks. The walk is at about 2,300 meters above sea level: take it slowly and carry water. It ends below the Argo Mill, about 15 minutes’ walk east of downtown.

Tickets

Nothing on the route needs a ticket; the museums, the hot springs and the Argo Mill are seen from outside only.

Keep going

• Georgetown: The Silver Queen’s Survivors

What you get

• An email from tours@the3dtravel.com 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

• Photo: Carol M. Highsmith, Gates Frontiers Fund Colorado Collection, Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress (public domain)
• Photo: Nicole Byrd / James St. John, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons (license)
• Photo: Xnatedawgx, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (license)
• Photo: Erie Bard, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (license)
• Photo: Chris Light, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (license)

The post Idaho Springs: The Water Beneath the Gold appeared first on The3DTravel.

A self-guided audio walk for the evening through downtown Idaho Springs, Colorado, on the true dark history of a mining town. It starts at the east end of town, where on a summer night in 1903 a crowd turned fourteen union miners out into the dark, passes the Argo Mill, where four miners drowned when blasting broke into hidden water in the tunnel in January 1943, and then walks west up Miner Street through the story of how that night came about. On July 28, 1903, during a miners’ strike for the eight-hour day, kegs of powder or dynamite wrecked a building at the Sun and Moon mine and a union miner named Philip Fire was found dying on the hillside. The next evening the fire bell called the town to the Opera House, where a mine manager and bank president moved to take the union men out of the jail, a deputy district attorney warned that no one had presented any evidence, and the motion carried with a shout. Fourteen men were marched east along the main street and told never to come back. You will hear what the records say about who planned it, who was tried and acquitted, and why the hundred and twenty-nine citizens charged over that night never faced a jury. No ghost stories are told, because none was found in the records; the miners’ legends are labeled as legends. Everything is told from public sidewalks and streets; nothing is narrated on private ground or inside the mill, and no tickets are sold or bundled.

The stops

1. The Edge of Town: Into the Darkness
2. The Argo Mill: Four Men Underground
3. The Miner Street Bridge: The Night of the Fire Bell
4. City Hall: The Strike and the Night of July 28
5. The First National Bank: The Morning After
6. The Hanchett Building: The Men in the Jail
7. The Opera House Site: A Meeting and a Motion
8. The Library Corner: One Law for Whom?

Finding the start

Start on the north sidewalk of Colorado Boulevard near 27th Avenue, at the east end of town where the paved Greenway path meets the boulevard, facing east along the road (motels and parking nearby; the Argo Mill is about 600 meters west).

Terrain and access

About 1.9 kilometers, step-free and nearly level on sidewalks and a paved path beside Colorado Boulevard, then Miner Street. Crosswalks on Miner Street and at 14th, 15th and 16th Avenues; the boulevard itself is not crossed. Lighting after dark has not been checked; carry a light and stay on lit sidewalks. No admissions. The walk ends in the middle of downtown, near street parking.

Tickets

Nothing on the route needs a ticket, and nothing is narrated on private ground.

Keep going

• Idaho Springs: The Water Beneath the Gold
• Georgetown: The Silver Queen’s Survivors

What you get

• An email from tours@the3dtravel.com 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

• Int77345, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (license)
• D&RG Railfan, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (license)
• Plazak at English Wikipedia, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons (license)
• Thad Roan from Littleton, CO, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons (license)
• Jeffrey Beall from Denver, Colorado, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons (license)

The post Idaho Springs After Dark: The Miners Who Were Banished appeared first on The3DTravel.

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

1. The Cushman Block: The Missing Floor
2. The Hotel de Paris: A New Name on an Old Bakery
3. Town Hall: The Actors Who Saved a Firehouse
4. The Hydro Plant: The Year the Lights Went Out
5. Kneisel and Anderson: The Grocer Who Stayed
6. The Old Courthouse: Temporary for a Century
7. The Hamill House: A Cottage Made Grand
8. Alpine Hose No. 2: A Bell on One Condition
9. Grace Church: The Chapel the Wind Knocked Over
10. 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

• Idaho Springs: The Water Beneath the Gold

What you get

• An email from tours@the3dtravel.com 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)

The post Georgetown: The Silver Queen’s Survivors appeared first on The3DTravel.

A self-guided audio walk through Georgetown, Colorado, after dark. In December 1868 Georgetown’s own newspaper, the Colorado Miner, announced that the town had a ghost, and boasted that it was now ahead of any town in the territory in the ghost and haunted house line. The ghost had a name: Bainbridge, hanged by a crowd the year before. Who was he, and what had the town done to him? Nine stops on downtown streets find out, through the stories this silver town told and the records it kept: brothel rumors stuck to the Hotel de Paris, a burned building the town left standing for twenty-six years, a foot racer who left his wife and daughter for the madam Mattie Silks, a Black man shot in a saloon whose name the paper never printed, a blog writer for the Denver Public Library who went looking for the man behind the ghost, a young teacher drowned in 1867, the women of Brownell Street, and the masked men who took a prisoner from the jail in 1877. At a small stone jail the answer comes from the 1867 newspapers. History, not horror: real people, named, and ghost stories always told as stories. No tickets needed, nothing entered.

The stops

1. The Hotel de Paris: A Town That Tells Stories
2. Sixth and Taos: Fire in the Night
3. Alpine Hose No. 2: The Foot Racer and the Madam
4. The Red Ram: Saloon Nights on Sixth Street
5. The Library Building: Looking for the Man Behind the Ghost
6. The Old School: The Teacher and the Claim
7. Brownell Street: The Far Side
8. The Courthouse Corner: The Night of the Masked Men
9. The Old Jail: The Ghost and the Verdict

Finding the start

Start on the north sidewalk of Sixth Street just east of Taos Street in Georgetown’s historic downtown, facing the Hotel de Paris across the street.

Terrain and access

About 1.1 kilometers, nearly level, with no steps, in a small mountain town at about 2,600 meters (8,500 feet): take it slowly if you are not used to the altitude. Made for the evening on downtown streets: Fifth, Taos and Brownell are tagged as lit on the map, Sixth, Seventh and Argentine are not yet confirmed, and nobody has walked the route after dark yet. Sidewalks on every stretch as mapped; Brownell Street is a two-lane county road with light traffic. Snow and ice are likely from late fall to spring. No creek banks, mine sites, cemeteries or private grounds. No admissions. The walk ends at the courthouse, about 250 meters from where it starts.

Tickets

Nothing needs a ticket.

Keep going

• Georgetown: The Silver Queen’s Survivors

What you get

• An email from tours@the3dtravel.com 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

• 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: Jeffrey Beall, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (license)
• Photo: Jeffrey Beall, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (license)

The post Georgetown After Dark: The Ghost and the Verdict appeared first on The3DTravel.