The Ghost Town Club of Colorado holds several regular meetings each year, featuring speakers presenting programs on a variety of topics related to ghost towns, mining camps and their allied subjects and history. Meetings are in-person, and also streamed live virtually on Zoom.
Past meeting topics have included: “How to Find a Ghost Town”, “The Adventure, Danger and Romance of Colorado’s Railroads”, “Denver’s Great Mansions and the People Who Inhabited Them”, “Bonanza Victorian: The Architecture of Colorado Ghost Towns”, and “Ghost Town Jeopardy”.
Regular Meetings occur on the second Thursday of designated months. Regular Meetings, Special Events and Field Trips are announced on this page and in the monthly Ghost Town Gazette.
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March Regular Meeting
Open to all, non-members, friends and curious persons also welcomed!
Guest Speakers – Lee and Jane Whiteley, GTC Members, featuring “Cherry Creek: Castlewood Canyon, Canals, Clark Colony Cherries”.
The 1890 Castlewood Canyon Dam south of Franktown helped protect Denver from Cherry Creek flooding, but the primary motive for the dam was irrigation. The dam, a canal and water storage system, and 15,000 acres of Rufus “Potato” Clark’s Clark Colony provided the opportunity for new farming operations. A series of developers and land promoters enticed settlers to develop 5- to 10-acre parcels of irrigated land for fruit orchards, primarily cherries. But bankruptcies, problems with the dam, and lawsuits over land ownership and water rights slowed the developments. However, it was the failure of the Castlewood Dam in August 1933 that immediately ended the flow of water to the orchards.
Lee Whiteley is the author of eight books most dealing with the transportation history of the West. His first book, The Cherokee Trail, was the 1999 Denver Westerners Brand Book. He and wife Jane are associate producers of the PBS documentary “Paving the Way, the National Park-to-Park Highway.”
We hope to see you in-person, however if you are unable to make it you may join via Zoom:
Join the March Regular Meeting on Zoom:
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/7303031958?pwd=dXDmL84HYfbxKebIX0YkAC1C11Rz49.1&omn=91006259692
Meeting ID: 730 303 1958
Passcode: CcHi-2026x
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We invite you to attend one of our monthly meetings to learn more about us! Please contact us for more information!