Frequency Top 25

Description

Ashcroft ... two prospectors from the new camp called Aspen found silver deposits along Castle Creek and formed their own camp, Castle Forks City, where the two forks of Castle Creek join. The boom year was 1882, when rich ore was found in the Montezuma and Tam O'Shanter mines. The owners received financial backing from Horace Tabor, who had recently become a very rich man in Leadville. In 1883, when Tabor came with his new bride Baby Doe to inspect his holdings, miners enjoyed a twenty-four-hour celebration that included a ball, banquet, and free drinks in the town's twenty saloons. By then the place was known as Ashcraft, named with a slight variation - for prospector and town promoter T. E. Ashcraft, who had actually founded a short-lived competing camp called Highland. Ashcroft had a school, bowling alley, sawmill, smelter, two newspapers, six hotels, and a population of two thousand, making it larger than Aspen. Ashcroft's ore bodies were quickly depleted, however, and by 1885 many of its buildings had been moved to Aspen, where major silver strikes attracted miners from all over. Ashcroft was a has-been, home to only a hundred summer residents. It was a ghost town by 1900, although the post office hung on for twelve more years, perhaps by bureaucratic oversight. During World War II, the town was used for ski training by the Tenth Mountain Division from Camp Hale. After World War II, Stuart Mace, commander of the canine division of the Tenth Mountain Division, returned to Ashcroft to raise and train huskies. Mace and his dogs were featured in the 1950s television series Sergeant Preston of the Yukon with Ashcroft often used as the setting for the show. Today Ashcroft is being protected and restored by the Aspen Historical Society. One can visit this genuine ghost town, enjoy the site, and leave with the feeling that the town will still be there if one returns years later. That is, unfortunately, seldom the case. The two-story Hotel View is the grandest and most photogenic structure in town. Other buildings include cabins, a mercantile, jail, blacksmith's shop, assay office, laundry, and post office. A saloon is the current headquarters for the historical society, where old photographs, account of the town's history.