Central City
The Centre Of What Was Called The Richest Square Mile On Earth After John Gregory Struck Gold In Gregory Gulch In May 1859. A National Historic Landmark District Holding The Central City Opera House Of 1878, One Of The Oldest Opera Houses In Continuous Use In The United States. · Central City, Colorado
John Gregory found gold in the gulch below this town in May 1859 and within weeks the hillside held thousands of men. What they took out of it earned the district the name the richest square mile on earth, and what they built with the proceeds is still standing: a National Historic Landmark district of brick and stone climbing a narrow gulch, with an opera house that opened in 1878 and has never permanently stopped. The Central City Opera still runs a summer festival in it, which makes this a mining camp with a working nineteenth-century opera house in the middle - not a preserved one. Down in the Teller House bar, a woman's face was painted on the floorboards in 1936 and has been walked over ever since. Limited-stakes gambling arrived in 1991 and put small casinos into the old fronts, though Black Hawk a mile downhill took the big ones - which is exactly why Central City kept more of its fabric and fewer of its visitors, and why it is the better of the two to walk around.
Eureka Street, Central City, Colorado, 80427, United States
A year-round town of a few hundred people, reached from Interstate 70 by the Central City Parkway. The casinos operate daily and year-round; most other attractions are seasonal. THE CENTRAL CITY OPERA FESTIVAL RUNS IN SUMMER and is the reason to time a visit, with tickets sold well in advance. The Teller House, the museums and the mine tours keep seasonal hours that contract sharply in winter, when this is a cold, quiet and largely shut mountain town at 8,500 feet.