Review by Ed Quillen
Colorado attractions – October 2000 – Colorado Central Magazine
Colorado Museums and Historic Sites A Colorado Guide Book
by Victor J. Danilov
Published in 2000 by University Press of Colorado
ISBN 0870815733
THIS IS THE MOST THOROUGH state-wide guidebook I’ve ever encountered. If there’s a spot in Colorado that is of historical, artistic, or scientific interest, and it’s open to the public, then it’s in here.
To put this another way, I thought I knew this territory pretty well. But I had no idea that there was an astronomical observatory in Alamosa, or that there were tours of the Aberdeen Quarry near Gunnison, source of the granite that built the state capitol in Denver.
After some introductory material, Colorado Museums and Historic Sites is in alphabetical order, by town, and it is well indexed, making it simple to find what you’re looking for.
It covers history museums, art museums and cultural centers, historic sites, scientific museums and facilities, and visitor centers — just about any reason you might want to pull off the road.
Each entry gets several descriptive paragraphs, along with phone numbers, web pages and the like. Here’s a sample:
SILVER CLIFF
History Museum
Silver Cliff Museum
Two firefighting hose carts and a hook-and-ladder cart from the nineteenth century are among the items on display at the Silver Cliff Museum, housed in Silver Cliff’s 1879 former firehouse and town hall.
Other collections and displays in the 1,500-square-foot municipal museum, which opened in 1959, include early clothes, furniture, household items, and photographs from the area, which was once a mining center.
Silver Cliff Museum, 610 Main St., P.O. Box 154, Silver Cliff, CO 81252. Phone and fax: 719-783-2615. Hours: Memorial Day-Labor Day, 10-4 Thurs.-Mon.; closed remainder of year. Admission: adults, $2; children 6-13, $1; children under 6, free.
Wildlife refuge
Mission: Wolf
Mission: Wolf is a 73-acre wolf refuge operated by Kent Weber and Tracy Brooks near Silver Cliff. It is open to the public. Large enclosures on the forested land house approximately 50 pure- and cross-bred wolves, most of which were raised elsewhere and turned over to the sanctuary.
The refuge program emphasizes education. Weber and Brooks often travel to give talks to school and community groups and others about the wolves, pointing out that they cannot be domesticated.
Mission: Wolf, P.O. Box 211, Silver Cliff, CO 81252. Phone: 719-746-2919. Hours: 9 a.m.-sunset daily by appointment. Admission: free.
YOU SHOULD BEAR IN MIND that this is a “guide book,” not a “reference book.” It repeats some mythology and supposition that isn’t true.
For instance, the Saguache Museum entry mentions “the jail cell where [Alfred] Packer was held briefly after his 1874 arrest…” Packer was in fact kept at Sheriff Amos Wall’s ranch, as any of the hosts at the museum will tell you.
For Westcliffe, we read that “the Westcliff (this is the town’s original spelling) schoolhouse was built of local fieldstone…” No, the town was always spelled “Westcliffe.” The German stonemason who carved the inscription on the school just misspelled the name.
It has Leadville as “the nation’s highest incorporated town,” when that honor actually belongs to Alma. Leadville is America’s highest city. That may seem like quibbling, but it is a distinction that Alma residents take seriously.
It also missed one museum distinction. The Lowell Thomas Museum in Victor is the only mining-town museum I’ve ever been in that even mentions the Western Federation of Miners — the radical union led by Big Bill Haywood that evolved into the Wobblies. That’s a chapter of our history that is often ignored, and Victor ought to be commended for addressing it.
But those minor flaws don’t really detract from the real purpose of the book — guidance toward interesting places in Colorado, with useful information about each spot, so that you don’t end up making a fall weekend trip to some place that is closed in the winter.
It’s well worth browsing before your next trip out of town, or keeping in your car. And since these things change all the time, let’s hope they issue an updated version every couple of years.
— Ed Quillen
