Haunted at Timberline Home

The coal mining camp of Floresta cared not about silver nor gold: the demand for coal to drive the stream engines that drove the locomotives that drove the Colorado mining industry was good enough. Floresta, near Crested Butte, never caught up with demand until the mining boom finally ended in the 1930's. In fact, at one time, two different railroads were competing to get to Floresta first. The Denver and Rio Grande won, while the Denver South Park and Pacific was just a couple of miles from finishing. The bottom photos, below, show the long-ago abandoned Denver and Rio Grande line running toward Floresta, still covered with spilled coal, and the famous Castles, which tower near Floresta.

There were many labor problems in this general area; several men were killed during strikes at nearby Baldwin (the remaining cabins at Baldwin are shown in the top two photographs—Baldwin is on private land owned by a homeowners association now in the process of a massive real estate sale on all sides of the well-preserved remains of Baldwin). Most of the towns in this area are gone now, like Ruby and Irwin (Irwin is mostly a bunch of newer private homes). Floresta itself is hard to find. You have to navigate in by foot through the public lands. As of this writing, the area around Floresta is up for sale, but there are no private property signs at the site itself.