Name: Georgetown After Dark: The Ghost and the Verdict
SKU: 164

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

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