By Kim Grant Colorado has many significant historic mining and mill sites across its vast landscape, but few have as much intact infrastructure, technology and machinery in place that lend itself to historic interpretation and potential educational tours, as does the Paris Mill near Alma in Park County. The Paris Mill was placed on Colorado’s …
By Laura Van Dusen
County: Park
Founded: 1873
Elevation: 10,578 ft.
Population: 270 (2010)
At just over two miles high, Alma is the highest incorporated town in North America. It was a gold mecca in 1859, later silver boomed, and, more recently, prospecting around Alma has focused on spectacular rhodochrosite crystals found at the Sweet Home Mine.
by Jane Koerner Pennsylvania Mountain may be too modest in contour and elevation to compete with the fourteeners of international renown, but the biologists don’t complain. While hundreds of hikers elbow their way up the highest peaks of the Mosquito Range, the scientists inspect their decades-old tundra plots relatively undisturbed. On the ridge below their …