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Frisco to Copper Mountain: (6 miles one way) This path follows the grade of the D.S.P. narrow gauge. Its competitor, the D. & R.G., once built its track side by side with the D.S.P. but I-70 now obliterates the D. & R.G. grade.
Nomadic Ute tribes once camped at the Ten Mile Canyon’s mouth. Just inside the canyon, note the skeleton of the Excelsior Mine’s once-busy ore stamp mill across I-70 at right.
As you ride from here, the mines will lie on the bikeway at your left. Notice just after you start the Juno Mine, discovered by Frisco’s first resident, Henry Recen. Later at .05 miles, the King Solomon’s massive gray tailings dump reaches to the bikepath. Frisco’s most talented promoter, Col. James H. Myers, launched the King Solomon and with it reversed Frisco’s fading silver fortunes. The big King Solomon Mine, marked by its gray tailings pile, has a tunnel that goes more than one mile into Mt. Victoria.
Next lies the Kitty Innes, discovered by Henry Learned, the Indian scout who named Frisco. At 1.5 miles, you’ll pass the Mary Verna, where a big power house rose alongside the rail track.
Curtin, a townsite at 2 miles, was once a railroad commune. Overgrown foundations at the right of the bike path mark the site. They supported the community’s coal-fired compressor, which powered mining machinery for the Mary Verna and North American Mines nearby.
A log railroad building, one and one-half stories high, anchored the town. Nearby, the Wib Giberson family once occupied a cabin before they homesteaded their historic Frisco ranch. A boardinghouse and log homes housed rail and mine workers.
Named for railway section man, Bill Curtin the town served both the Denver, South Park & Pacific (later renamed the Colorado & Southern) and the Denver & Rio Grande narrow gauge lines.
Next at 4 miles comes the Admiral Mine, one of the lower canyon’s most productive. Beyond here, across from Officers Gulch, the Monroe Mine stood high on the east wall. During Prohibition, a still in one of the Monroe cabins produced moonshine.
At Copper Mountain an 1880’s town named for Judge John S. Wheeler earned its reputation as the county’s most fun community. Wheeler, on the site of today’s Copper Mountain Village, began when Judge John S. Wheeler built a much-needed sawmill on his hayfields at the base of today’s Vail Pass. Providing ties for the coming railroad and timber for the bustling mine camps above in the Ten Mile Canyon, the first sawmill prompted several more, establishing a mid-canyon logging industry.
Soon saloons, a billiard hall, blacksmith shop, wagon shop, postoffice and notary office, hotel and Judge Wheeler’s general store emerged to serve a peak population of 225.
Frisco-Dillon-Keystone: (10 miles one way) Begin biking through 1879-founded Frisco where area silver strikes solidified the town’s economic future. Frisco, unlike the bawdy mine camps spawned by news of gold, began as a planned community laid out by capitalists who knew the railroad was coming.
Past Frisco on the route to Dillon you’ll pass through former ranchlands that stretched to fringe the 1870’s trading post of Dillon, its townsite now submerged by Dillon Reservoir. The Giberson ranch once spread where Safeway and the Holiday Inn stand. The Ballif ranch (Adolphus Ballif was Dillon’s 1880’s blacksmith) lay serenely in the basin where three rivers, the Snake, Ten Mile and Blue, joined.
Old Dillon, its site submerged beneath the waters of the present Dillon Reservoir, sprang up on the site of LaBonte’s Hole, an early 1800’s fur trappers rendezvous.
When two railroads arrived in the early ‘80’s, Dillon put down roots. The town, however, quickly uprooted itself and managed to move three times.
Before its final move, Dillon had always been a supply town. For decades beginning in the 1880’s, the town supplied ranchers down the Blue who stocked up on groceries and implements there. Later as a junction point for Colorado Hwy. 9 and U.S. 6, it served as a gas stop for travelers.
Dillon also slaked the thirst of local rowdies, providing eight licensed liquor establishments for a population of 80 in the 1950’s—one for each ten residents.
In 1956, the Denver Water Board announced plans to raze Old Dillon and build a dam to create today’s reservoir.
You’ll pedal past the dam’s glory hole. Above, where dam builders cut Lake Hill, eons of geologic history appear in the layered sedimentary rock seen from the bikeway. On Lake Hill in 1918 Norwegian ski jumper Peter Prestrud constructed the Dillon Jump, a world record site. The ride to Keystone also passes the historic Rice Ranch at today’s Summit Cove residential neighborhood ...
‘SUMMIT’ is available in local
bookstores and at alpenrosepress.com.
Mary Ellen Gilliland’s eight local books include a humorous county history titled, ‘Colorado Rascals, Scoundrels and No Goods,’and ‘The New Summit Hiker.’
Nomadic Ute tribes once camped at the Ten Mile Canyon’s mouth. Just inside the canyon, note the skeleton of the Excelsior Mine’s once-busy ore stamp mill across I-70 at right.
As you ride from here, the mines will lie on the bikeway at your left. Notice just after you start the Juno Mine, discovered by Frisco’s first resident, Henry Recen. Later at .05 miles, the King Solomon’s massive gray tailings dump reaches to the bikepath. Frisco’s most talented promoter, Col. James H. Myers, launched the King Solomon and with it reversed Frisco’s fading silver fortunes. The big King Solomon Mine, marked by its gray tailings pile, has a tunnel that goes more than one mile into Mt. Victoria.
Next lies the Kitty Innes, discovered by Henry Learned, the Indian scout who named Frisco. At 1.5 miles, you’ll pass the Mary Verna, where a big power house rose alongside the rail track.
Curtin, a townsite at 2 miles, was once a railroad commune. Overgrown foundations at the right of the bike path mark the site. They supported the community’s coal-fired compressor, which powered mining machinery for the Mary Verna and North American Mines nearby.
A log railroad building, one and one-half stories high, anchored the town. Nearby, the Wib Giberson family once occupied a cabin before they homesteaded their historic Frisco ranch. A boardinghouse and log homes housed rail and mine workers.
Named for railway section man, Bill Curtin the town served both the Denver, South Park & Pacific (later renamed the Colorado & Southern) and the Denver & Rio Grande narrow gauge lines.
Next at 4 miles comes the Admiral Mine, one of the lower canyon’s most productive. Beyond here, across from Officers Gulch, the Monroe Mine stood high on the east wall. During Prohibition, a still in one of the Monroe cabins produced moonshine.
At Copper Mountain an 1880’s town named for Judge John S. Wheeler earned its reputation as the county’s most fun community. Wheeler, on the site of today’s Copper Mountain Village, began when Judge John S. Wheeler built a much-needed sawmill on his hayfields at the base of today’s Vail Pass. Providing ties for the coming railroad and timber for the bustling mine camps above in the Ten Mile Canyon, the first sawmill prompted several more, establishing a mid-canyon logging industry.
Soon saloons, a billiard hall, blacksmith shop, wagon shop, postoffice and notary office, hotel and Judge Wheeler’s general store emerged to serve a peak population of 225.
Frisco-Dillon-Keystone: (10 miles one way) Begin biking through 1879-founded Frisco where area silver strikes solidified the town’s economic future. Frisco, unlike the bawdy mine camps spawned by news of gold, began as a planned community laid out by capitalists who knew the railroad was coming.
Past Frisco on the route to Dillon you’ll pass through former ranchlands that stretched to fringe the 1870’s trading post of Dillon, its townsite now submerged by Dillon Reservoir. The Giberson ranch once spread where Safeway and the Holiday Inn stand. The Ballif ranch (Adolphus Ballif was Dillon’s 1880’s blacksmith) lay serenely in the basin where three rivers, the Snake, Ten Mile and Blue, joined.
Old Dillon, its site submerged beneath the waters of the present Dillon Reservoir, sprang up on the site of LaBonte’s Hole, an early 1800’s fur trappers rendezvous.
When two railroads arrived in the early ‘80’s, Dillon put down roots. The town, however, quickly uprooted itself and managed to move three times.
Before its final move, Dillon had always been a supply town. For decades beginning in the 1880’s, the town supplied ranchers down the Blue who stocked up on groceries and implements there. Later as a junction point for Colorado Hwy. 9 and U.S. 6, it served as a gas stop for travelers.
Dillon also slaked the thirst of local rowdies, providing eight licensed liquor establishments for a population of 80 in the 1950’s—one for each ten residents.
In 1956, the Denver Water Board announced plans to raze Old Dillon and build a dam to create today’s reservoir.
You’ll pedal past the dam’s glory hole. Above, where dam builders cut Lake Hill, eons of geologic history appear in the layered sedimentary rock seen from the bikeway. On Lake Hill in 1918 Norwegian ski jumper Peter Prestrud constructed the Dillon Jump, a world record site. The ride to Keystone also passes the historic Rice Ranch at today’s Summit Cove residential neighborhood ...
‘SUMMIT’ is available in local
bookstores and at alpenrosepress.com.
Mary Ellen Gilliland’s eight local books include a humorous county history titled, ‘Colorado Rascals, Scoundrels and No Goods,’and ‘The New Summit Hiker.’
