The story
Caribou boomed after an 1869 silver strike, growing to as many as 3,000 people in the 1870s — a full city at 10,000 feet, famous for wind that residents claimed could blow a dog down Main Street. Its ore was rich enough that a Caribou silver brick paved President Grant's hotel entrance in Central City in 1873.
Everything conspired against it: major fires in 1879 and 1899, a diphtheria epidemic, and finally the 1893 silver crash. The post office held on until 1905. Today two stone buildings and a cemetery stand in the meadow, with the wind exactly as advertised.
What remains today
Two roofless stone structures, mine dumps, and the cemetery, on open meadow at the edge of the Indian Peaks.
From the archives
Caribou turns up on 70,970 digitized newspaper pages from Colorado — read them free in the Library of Congress's Chronicling America collection.
Source: Library of Congress digital collections.
Questions from the field
- How do I get to Caribou ghost town?
- From Nederland, take County Road 128 about five miles up; ordinary cars manage it in dry conditions. The two stone ruins mark the townsite.
From the field
The most valuable part of this record is the part only visitors can write.
Stamp your passport
Check in at Caribou — GPS-verified visits earn an inked stamp.
File a field report
Road conditions, what's still standing, what's gone — your report joins the record.
Add photographs
Credited, dated, and preserved as part of Caribou's permanent record.
No field reports yet — sign in to file the first.
Primary sources for this record
- — USGS GNIS feature 181099
- — Boulder County historical records — Caribou
- — Colorado Encyclopedia — Caribou