Brief by Central Staff
Local News – May 2002 – Colorado Central Magazine
The town hall building was one of five historic structures that were destroyed by an April 15 fire in St. Elmo, which sits along Chalk Creek about 20 miles west of Buena Vista and was one of the best-preserved and most-photographed ghost towns in America.
Also destroyed were a mule barn, an 1880s home, and two other buildings.
Although there were rumors at first that the fire was the result of a meth lab, those were soon put to rest. At press time, authorities blamed an electrical problem in the town hall that might have ignited fumes from kerosene stored in one of the buildings.
The town hall was built in 1890-92, replacing one that was destroyed by an April 19, 1890 fire that ravaged both sides of the main street. It survived an 1898 fire, as well as one in 1987 that destroyed the St. Elmo Trading Post.
Melanie Milam-Roth of Buena Vista, whose family owns four of the five buildings lost in this year’s fire, told the Denver Post that it’s too early to decide whether to rebuild, although they had raised money for restoration work. “You can never truly replicate these buildings. You can build something that looks like them, but you can’t replace them.”
The fire was reported by St. Elmo’s only winter residents, the Jay Stone family. They live about a mile west of town, and spotted smoke as they were passing through. They used a satellite phone to call the authorities, then started shoveling snow onto the blaze.
Several responding fire-fighters had to be treated for inhaling toxic fumes. The fire is being investigated by the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, the Chaffee County Fire Protection District , and the Chaffee County Sheriff’s Department.
