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.