Just north of Crested Butte, along Gothic Road, is the tiny mountain village of Gothic, Colorado. Today, it's home to the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory, where scientists from around the world study the area's mountain ecosystems.
But long before the scientists arrived, Gothic was a booming silver-mining town. And its history goes back even further than that.
Before Gothic: The Ute People
Long before Gothic existed, the surrounding mountains and valleys were part of the Ute people's traditional homeland, where they hunted, fished, and gathered food for generations.
As settlers and prospectors pushed west in search of land, gold, and silver, the Ute people began losing more and more of their homeland.
In 1868, the U.S. government established a large Ute reservation covering much of western Colorado. Interestingly, the future townsite of Gothic sat just outside its eastern boundary.
The Brunot Agreement, signed in 1873 and approved by Congress in 1874, resulted in the loss of roughly 3.7 million acres of Ute reservation land, opening up valuable mining territory. By 1881, the White River and Uncompahgre Utes had been forcibly relocated from Colorado to reservations in Utah.
And while all of this was happening, a new mining town was taking shape near the reservation boundary, on land that was still part of the Ute people's traditional homeland.
It All Started With Silver
In September 1878, a prospector named Truman Blancett reportedly discovered silver in the mountains near Gothic. A local history retold by Mesa County Libraries says he only told two people before leaving for the winter.
Apparently, word got around anyway!
According to that story, when he returned the following spring, around 200 prospectors had already arrived, hoping to find silver themselves.
Gothic was officially incorporated on July 17, 1879, taking its name from nearby Gothic Mountain, whose jagged peaks reminded early settlers of Gothic architecture.
The town grew quickly, although accounts differ quite a bit on how many people lived there at its peak. Hotels, saloons, stores, cabins, and even a newspaper popped up to serve the growing community.
It's pretty wild to think about a bustling town so far up in the mountains in the 1880s. We drove through on a maintained road, and it's still a pretty remote place. I can only imagine what it took to get people and supplies up there back then.
Life in Gothic During the Silver Boom
Life in Gothic during the 1880s sounds like it was pretty entertaining!
Stories about the boom years describe revolvers, evening bonfires on Main Street, horse races, gambling, and dancing. I'd take details like "nearly everyone" carrying a gun or a bonfire "every evening" as colorful recollections rather than an exact picture of everyday life.
One reminiscence preserved in a Gunnison history collection was about a couple known as Uncle Charley and Mother Howe, who ran a hotel in town. They were remembered for their hospitality, comfortable beds, and home-cooked meals. Uncle Charley apparently took cleanliness pretty seriously, too. He was known to grab a broom whenever he spotted dirt on the porch!
Local histories also describe a visit from former President Ulysses S. Grant in 1880 while he was touring Colorado's mining towns. One story says the miners welcomed him with explosives and that he spoke from the Gothic House hotel balcony. Quite the welcome for a little mountain town, if that account has the details right!
The Darker Side of Gothic
Of course, not everything about life in Gothic was as entertaining as the bonfires and celebrations.
In March 1881, newspapers across the country reported that a Chinese man named Wang Foo had been lynched in Gothic. His supposed crime? Opening a laundry business.
The reports described opposition to his laundry business and an anti-Chinese group ordering him to leave town. But these were newspaper accounts, and the conflicting versions make it hard to know exactly what happened.
On March 5, the group reportedly returned to his business and demanded that he leave. When he refused again, the men supposedly dragged him outside and hanged him from a nearby tree.
The story spread through newspapers across the country, but here's where things get interesting.
Gothic's own newspaper, the Elk Mountain Bonanza, later claimed that the whole thing had been misunderstood. According to the paper, nobody had actually been killed. Instead, the townspeople had staged a mock hanging using an effigy, essentially a stuffed figure representing a Chinese man.
Another local paper, the Gunnison News, reported a dance afterward to celebrate the effigy hanging.
The newspaper defended the incident, arguing that the town had done nothing wrong because nobody had actually been harmed.
Whether a man was actually killed remains unclear. The effigy account doesn't prove that the killing reports were false, and the killing reports alone don't settle the question either. But either way, it's pretty disturbing to think that threatening Chinese people and telling them they weren't welcome was considered something worth celebrating.
And Gothic wasn't alone. Anti-Chinese sentiment was widespread throughout the American West at the time. Just a few months earlier, in October 1880, a violent anti-Chinese riot in Denver had left one man dead and much of the city's Chinatown destroyed.
I came across a fascinating article from History Colorado called A Lynching in Gothic, Colorado? by Benjamin Wong Blonder. He dug through the original newspaper reports trying to figure out what really happened, and the article goes into quite a bit more history than just this one incident.
It's definitely worth a read if you enjoy digging into the lesser-known stories behind these old mining towns.
When the Boom Faded
Unfortunately, Gothic's glory days didn't last very long.
Gothic's boom was short-lived. By 1890, according to RMBL's history, the prospectors seeking their fortunes had moved on. One by one, people packed up and left.
By the early 1900s, Gothic was practically a ghost town.
But there was one man who wasn't ready to give up on it.
His name was Garwood Judd, and he would eventually become known as "The Man Who Stayed."
Garwood Judd: The Man Who Stayed
Garwood Hall Judd arrived in Gothic around 1880, hoping to make his fortune in silver mining. Over the years, he ran a saloon, worked in real estate, and even served as mayor and police magistrate.
But as the town emptied out, Judd stayed.
Local accounts describe him looking after the nearly abandoned town and keeping a little museum of memorabilia in his cabin.
A local account, citing historian Duane Vandenbusch's The Gunnison Country, says the Fox Film Company made a documentary about him in 1928 called The Man Who Stayed!
He died in 1930 at the age of 78, and according to historical accounts, his ashes were scattered along the streets of Gothic.
Today, nearby Judd Falls is named in his honor. We actually hiked out to the waterfall during our trip, where there's a memorial bench overlooking the falls with this inscription:
To the wayfarer, friend or stranger this seat is offered in the name of "the man who stayed" Garwood Hall Judd.
At the time, I had no idea there was such an interesting story behind that bench!
A Second Life for Gothic
Gothic's story didn't end when the miners left.
In 1928, a biology professor named John C. Johnson founded the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory (RMBL) in the nearly abandoned town. He recognized that the surrounding mountains, wildflowers, and wildlife made it an ideal place for scientific research.
Rather than building an entirely new facility, the researchers made use of Gothic's abandoned buildings, turning old mining-era structures into laboratories, classrooms, and living quarters.
Over the years, Gothic became an important research site, attracting scientists and students from around the world to study everything from wildflowers and pollinators to marmots, snowfall, and climate change.
One of the more interesting residents is a man named billy barr, who first came to Gothic as a student in the early 1970s and returned for good in 1973. He began keeping detailed records of the weather and snowfall. What started as a personal hobby turned into decades of valuable climate data used by scientists!
Today, Gothic is still an active research community, and some of its original mining-era buildings are still standing.
Visitors can stop at the seasonal visitor center to learn about the town's history. Check RMBL's current visitor information for hours and guided tour options before heading up.
Not bad for a little mining town that nearly disappeared!
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