Gold Hill, CO

Gold Hill is a Boulder County census-designated place above Left Hand Canyon, about 8,300 feet on the mountainside northwest of Boulder. Gold Run carries the biggest piece of the story: prospectors found gold there on January 15, 1859, in what became Colorado's first lode discovery. The first townsite rose on Horsfal Hill, then a 1860 forest fire and difficult living conditions pushed the settlement to its present ridge between Gold Run and Lick Skillet. The Gold Hill Town Meeting, operating since 1859, still gives the small mountain settlement a civic center.

ATTRBrylie Oxley / CC BY-SA 3.0

Mining returned with the discovery of tellurium in 1872. Gold Hill gained a school, post office, general store, hotel, and boarding houses, while the 1873 Wentworth Hotel later became the Bluebird Lodge, a summer resort for working women. The Gold Hill Historic District and original townsite preserve the outlines of Colorado's early gold-rush communities, including mine remains and nineteenth-century buildings. Gold Hill is a mountain place where a creek, a fire, and two mining booms shaped the town's present ridge.