30 years ago – June 28, 1985
To the Editor: I for one appreciate having the tourists able to park on Lawrence St. in Central City. With the big parking problem we have in this town, it is also good for business, but the locals fill up the spaces all the time. If we can walk in order to accommodate the tourists I am sure all of the locals can. Let’s let the tourists come first. After all they are our livelihood. We would also like to thank Bob Dornbrock and his crews for the big improvement on the South Beaver Creek Road, especially the Mountain Meadow Hill we have to travel every day. Signed, Herb and Eileen Pfeifer. “The Madam’s Touch.”
The Gilpin County Public Library is now famous in Sydney, Australia. Travel writer Ron Knowles of Sydney’s Sunday Telegraph, wrote about Colorado in the May 19 issue of the paper. Knowles had a one day tour of the Front Range and it is interesting to read his impressions of the area. In part, the article says, “An hour’s drive west from Boulder takes travelers a century back in time, to the old gold mining centre of Central City, preserved as a relic of a raw, rough, brawling era spawned by the frantic scramble for gold. Central City is a ramshackle township clinging grittily to the mountainside and colorfully to a rumbustious past. Only the paintwork has changed over the years.” Knowles calls the library one of the “unexpected treasures that the visitor stumbles across.” He goes on to say, “The library is simply a shack among the mountain pines; a selection of its literary treasures, mostly paperbacks, are stacked in a bookcase outside, exposed to sub-zero temperatures, awaiting a borrower. It’s evidence of a trust that would hardly have paid off in gold-greedy Central City of yesteryear. And Gilpin County, in its innocent mountain splendor, is a far cry from the sophisticated ski playgrounds of Aspen, Breckenridge, and the intriguingly named Purgatory further west. But it’s a reminder that the eastern fringe of the Rockies holds many an inexpensive treat off the beaten tourist path.”
Support authors and subscribe to content
Subscribe to read the entire article.
