How well do you know your historic sites?! Each month a different photo of a historic site is featured here. Photos and Clues are typically provided by GTC members.
MAY 2026 MYSTERY PHOTO – CORRECTLY GUESSED BY PAULA MARTINEZ AS WALL STREET
Photo credit: Ron Ruhoff
CLUES
The great stone mill foundation and stone assay office remain today in this old mining town in Colorado’s Front Range, in this 1991 picture.
It had a post office from 1898-1921
A narrow gauge railroad, whose nickname referred to a European country, served this and many nearby small mining towns.
Today the stone assay office building is open as a museum one day a month during summer and fall.
ANSWER: Wall Street, on Fourmile Canyon Drive west of Boulder. Today the old mill and assay office are all that remain. The Wall Street area was home to a variety of metal mining activities in the late 1800s, including a small camp named Delphi. Charles Caryl visited the area in 1889, returned east to raise money, and opened the Gold Extraction Mining and Supply Company in present-day Wall Street in 1897. The Assay Office was constructed along with a store and boarding house, a large mill was built in 1901. The operation failed two years later. The assay office was purchased at a sheriff’s sale by James Bailey in 1907. It was used as the office of the Storm King Mine, and later converted into a residence for the Bailey family. Today it is the James F. Bailey Assay Office Museum and is open the 3rd Saturday of each summer-fall month. – Wikipedia
Can you guess the Mystery Photo? Use the form below to make a guess
APRIL 2026 MYSTERY PHOTO GUESSED BY RON RUHOFF AND PAULA MARTINEZ AS THE CARTER MILL
Photo credit: Bill Lettow
Something different this month. The location is not a mystery but the whole mine and mill site, and maybe a town as well, are. I don’t know the answer. I took this photo in August 1975. Its location is in the area south and/or west of Pitkin, maybe along Ohio Creek, maybe Quartz Creek. I only remember turning off Highway 50 at Ohio Creek and going north. I also remember being terribly hungry after visiting it, and going on to Pitkin hoping for some food, but in 1975 Pitkin was teetering on full ghosthood; there were some buildings but nothing to eat. As far as I can tell, not a trace of this operation remains. It had, in addition to this wonderful mill, a boardinghouse, office and a number of other buildings. In the last 5 years I have tried to rediscover this sprawling mill and have been up and down the roads in the area. It looks like there have been remediation efforts on these waterways but no sign of my 1975 discovery. Anybody recognize it? – Bill Lettow
ANSWER: Ron Ruhoff sent the photo to Mary Heberling over at the Pitkin Museum. She posted it to members and they agreed it was the Carter Mill near Ohio City. They think it is still being worked. Ron then looked at Google Images and found the double photo attached which shows the mill in 1927 and 1994.
Paula Martinez later added a useful bit of information. The mill was located on Gold Creek north of Ohio City, not Quartz Creek or Ohio Creek where I had been looking.
It’s great to have friends in high (elevation, that is) places. – Bill Lettow
PREVIOUS MYSTERY PHOTO GUESSED CORRECTLY BY TONY BOBAY AS FIRSTVIEW
Photo credit: Ron Ruhoff
This photo taken Feb 24, 2026 is of a town that has a unique name and geographic location. Only the county landfill, located here, remains active. It had a post office from 1907-1961 The railroad that runs through here was the first to reach Denver from the east back in 1870. The U.P. Big Boy 4014 toured through here 3 times since 2019. When the line first opened up, people traveling to Denver looked forward from here to a glimpse of the famous mountain that guided the gold rush, on the horizon to the west. The antipode of the entire USA 48 states is in the open Indian Ocean. There are only 3 spots in the 48 that are antipodal to small islands in the Indian Ocean. One is in Montana, one near Lamar, CO and the third is exactly to this mystery town.
ANSWER: Firstview. The Firstview, Colorado, post office operated from June 25, 1907, until November 24, 1961. The Cheyenne Wells, Colorado, post office now serves the area. Firstview was named for the spot where travelers got their first glimpse of Pikes Peak, 135 miles (217 km) to the west.
PREVIOUS MYSTERY PHOTO GUESSED CORRECTLY BY RON RUHOFF AS SAXONIA
Photo credit: Tony Bobay
It sits in a gulch with the same name as a famous fictional detective. It was once a stop on the Denver, South Park and Pacific Railroad It’s within a 40 mile radius of downtown Denver. The earliest known reference to it is from 1879. It was a company town built around lead smelting. Its estimated peak population was 300. It was once such a ghost to have not even thought to have existed.
ANSWER: Saxonia. An on again-off again galena (lead) smelting and prospecting town on a spur line in Holmes Gulch a few miles off the railroad main line. Very little has been written, or is known, about this town, but George Crofutt did mention it in his Grip-Sack Guide to Colorado, and it may have had as many as 300 residents and a dozen mines at one time in the 1880s. It was more or less “rediscovered” in 2001 when Richard Boulware bought an 1880 train ticket at an antique sale. Read about his exciting discovery here: https://www.westword.com/news/smelter-skelter-5067525/ .
Tony Bobay, who provided the picture, reports that getting to the place involves an “extremely arduous and dangerous journey to reach it. It’s not completely inaccessible, but requires a dangerous traversal of the old footpath from Crossons or white water rafting down the Platte to reach it”. Congrats to Tony for getting the picture and bringing it to our attention, and Ron for his detective work.
PREVIOUS MYSTERY PHOTO GUESSED CORRECTLY BY TONY BOBAY AS TELLER CITY
Photo credit: GTC member Ron Ruhoff
This photo is from 1975 when I used to camp in the area for elk hunting The town was established in 1879 for nearby silver mining and named for a Colorado politician whose name is also on a well-known hotel. It’s located at 9200 ft elevation, 6 miles due west of a well-known mountain range whose 12,000 ft peaks are named after cloud formations. It once had a population of 1300 and a large hotel, but died away by the 1890s. It had a post office from 1880-1885 Since I was there, the forest went to beetle kill, then was clear cut in 1990s when USFS did a “Passport in Time” project with informative signs, interpretive trails and a newly built log cabin of the type the town once had. Many of the fallen log cabins are still there to see today.
ANSWER: Teller City. Named for Senator Henry M. Teller and once the most important town in North Park, in 1882 it had a population of 1200. Only a few cabins and ruins remain, but once it was said to have 27 saloons.
PREVIOUS MYSTERY PHOTO GUESSED CORRECTLY BY RON RUHOFF AS “TIPPLER”
Photo credit: GTC member Jason Messing
The drone images above capture the upper tram and headframe of the South London Mine—aka American Flats—in Lake County, CO. Photographed by Jason Messing in August 2023, the images focus on the structure where a mysterious piece of mining equipment is located. Look closely at the top platform of the headframe, shown in greater detail in the images on the right.
Your clue is the following riddle:
I sit where iron tracks meet their end,
A heavy frame, old timber my friend.
Carts bring me rocks from the dark below,
I tip them gently so down they go.
No wheels of my own, yet I help them fly,
Gravity does the work while I stand by.
What am I?
ANSWER: The mine equipment shown here went by several names; “Ore Cart Dump”, “End Dump”, “Tippler” (British). This style of dump constructed of cast iron and heavy timber was typical of the hard-rock gold and silver mines of the late 1800’s to early 1900’s (pre WWI). It typically measured about 2’x4′ and was embedded into an elevated platform, allowing miners to utilize gravity. Ore carts traveled along rails from the mine to this exact point. Upon arrival, the front axle would contact the iron stop/trigger at the end and could then be manually tipped forward by one -usually two miners- effectively dumping ore through the opening into a chute. The smaller size of these carts could handle a max load of 2 tons, but on average were more likely handling around 3/4 to 1 ton.
In the case of the South London Mine, this would dump directly into a grizzly (a large classifier) through which smaller ore would pass and deposit into an ore bin. Directly adjacent on ground level was the aerial tram and buckets, which allowed miners to easily load ore buckets so that they may be sent to the lower buildings for further processing. -Jason Messing
PREVIOUS MYSTERY PHOTO GUESSED CORRECTLY BY JASON MESSING AS GENEVA
Photo credit: GTC member Ron Ruhoff
This mining camp was located at 11,700 feet , under the Continental Divide ridge, in the SW portion of a Colorado county well-known for mining history. Several structures remain, plus an old International truck. Very little reference to this town is found in all the well-known ghost town books. A ski area with the same name operated near here in the 1960s through the 1980s.
Answer: “I first went up there in 1968 with Ken Barrow. We drove to the end of the road and climbed Santa Fe Peak. I didn’t get pictures of the buildings there that day–wonder why. I was next there on my Continental Divide hike, when we used that Sill Mine site for our drop off the divide and met our drivers there. Reference in my Colorado’s Continental Divide book. Perry Eberhardt mentions Geneva Gulch as having a store and boarding house, above timberline, so I assume he refers to the Sill Mine site, now known as “Geneva” or “Geneva Gulch” by some. There were many years when driving up there was closed off by the private property of the Geneva Ski Area. It was finally open again in the 1990s and I went up there with Ron Morse in 2005, when I took the photos we used here. The Sill Mine was a goldmine and the major mining operation up there. That’s about all I can find.” -Ron Ruhoff
PREVIOUS MYSTERY PHOTO GUESSED CORRECTLY BY RON RUHOFF AS TARRYALL
Photo credit: GTC member Bill Lettow
Here are the remains of a commercial building on a road that has nearly disappeared under native grasses. This town started with one name and then 4 years later changed its name to be the same as a Colorado town that left its mark on the whole area but had been abandoned for 20 years. Although a thousand people lived in this new town at one time, the mines did not live up to expectations, and most of the people cleared out fast, but a structure standing there is on the National Register of Historic Places. The adopted town name was a made-up word that did not reflect how people felt about the original town.
Answer: Tarryall is well known as a very early mining settlement in South Park, one of the first, in 1859. Excitement about the new discoveries had hopefuls pouring in, and there may have been several thousand there at one time. But although the name suggested people should “tarry” there, many found the diggings had been “hogged up” by the pioneers; so they then moved on to found “Fairplay”, where the bad reputation of Tarryall was loudly disseminated and entered into the lore of the region.
The original Tarryall was deserted early, but 20 years later a new town sprang up 30 miles south of the old one. It was named Puma City, but in the 1900s, it was changed to Tarryall for reasons unknown or just to capitalize on a famous name. You can find it in Park County, on County Road 72. It’s just a sign, this old building, a few houses, an old church and a bend in the road. -Bill Lettow
