Haunted at Timberline Home

The coal mining camp of Floresta cared not about silver nor gold: the demand for coal to drive the steam 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 Denver and Rio Grande won by coming in from the Crested Butte side. The bottom photo shows the long-ago abandoned Denver and Rio Grande line running toward Floresta, covered with coal nuggets.

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 photos—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). 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, Floresta was recently sold, but still there are no private property signs at the site itself.