Creede
The Last Great Colorado Silver Boom, Which Took The Town From Nothing To Some Ten Thousand People Between 1889 And 1893. A Few Hundred Live Here Now, In A Box Canyon At 8,799 Feet, With A Nationally Regarded Repertory Theatre And A Firehouse Dug Into The Canyon Wall. · Creede, Colorado
Creede was the last of the great Colorado silver camps and it burned bright for about four years. Silver was found in 1889, ten thousand people arrived, and a local editor wrote the line the town has never escaped: it is day all day in the daytime, and there is no night in Creede. Bob Ford, who had shot Jesse James, opened a tent saloon here and was himself shot dead in it in 1892. The silver crash of 1893 ended all of it. What remains is a few hundred people in a box canyon at 8,799 feet, a main street of surviving fronts, and buildings dug into the canyon wall itself - including the firehouse, which is in a mine tunnel. The improbable part is the theatre: the Creede Repertory Theatre has run since 1966 and is among the better regional companies in the country, in a town this size. Above it the Bachelor Loop runs seventeen miles of unpaved mining road through what is left of the boom, and the Rio Grande below is gold medal trout water that almost nobody fishes.
Main Street, Creede, Colorado, 81130, United States
A year-round town of a few hundred people at the head of a box canyon. THE CREEDE REPERTORY THEATRE RUNS A SUMMER SEASON, roughly June to September, and it is the reason to time a visit - tickets sell ahead. Most shops, galleries and the museums are seasonal and close or reduce hours sharply from October to May. The Bachelor Loop historic mining drive is a seventeen-mile unpaved route, summer only and unsuitable for large vehicles. Winter here is long, cold and very quiet.