Mueller State Park and Ward

Written by ceddammit

Welcome to the past! It is July 2009. Yes, it is! Play along, DAMMIT! On this particular day, I have chosen to do some hiking at Mueller State Park, where the scenery begins before you even get out of your car. These first few pics were taken from the visitor center parking lot…

“Back side” of Pikes Peak
“Back side” of Pikes Peak
The mountains in the distance are the Sangre de Cristo range.

From the parking lot, I hoofed it to the Outlook Ridge Trail. No, this trail is not sponsored by Microsoft. Yet. In any event (except the Shot Put), I spotted what appeared to be a petrified emu…

At this point, a cold Rocky Mountain rain began to fall. The weather forecast had said that light rain was possible, so I was dressed to handle a light rain. But the light rain quickly turned into a heavy downpour so, with tears in my eyes and a tit in my willow, I reverse-hoofed it to get back to the visitor center parking lot.

Fast forward about a year. It’s now August 2010, and I am exploring the old gold mining town of Ward, Colorado. The Beaver is nowhere to be seen. This town is…I’m searching for the right word here…ummm…unique. For one thing, Ward has somehow gone from being a successful mining community to an automobile graveyard. See for yourself (no surrogate sight allowed)…

This long-dead Dodge truck…
…has spark plugs that still look shiny and new.
It also has this reminder on corporate policy.
This next vehicle appears to have been LEET

The above is only a small sampling of the dead cars scattered around town. There were plenty more to be seen, especially along the old railroad route. As you may recall from my other explorations of the Switzerland Trail, Ward was the northwestern terminus of the Colorado & Northwestern Railway (C&N), which shut down in 1920. Here’s the old depot (and much more of the town) …

The old C&N depot is still alive and well.
An underview of the town of Ward, Colorado
The old Congregational Church appears to have been lovingly maintained over the years.
The old Catholic Church…not so much…
…the Catholic Church was converted into a garage some time ago…
…I can only assume it was used to hold more of the town’s dead cars.
The “front” of an old hotel…
…this hotel is uniquely shaped, to fit into a road crotch.
The Little Girls’ Room
Somebody might be smokin’ in this outbuilding.
The town is surrounded by tailing piles from the old gold mines.
I’m guessing this was a magazine – a structure built to store explosives until they were needed in an adjoining mine.
Wider view of the magazine
This is no ghost town…plenty of people still live here for some reason.
This old schoolhouse now serves as post office, library, and town hall.

This last set of photos captures a few of the “pieces of flair” that I spotted around town…

An old stove
Wildflowers being pollinated
Byooooooobs!
And finally…Buddha driving a school bus

That was fun. Come on back next week, when ThrowBack Thursday will take us to the homesteads of the Tarryall Creek valley – a very different journey than the homesteads of Homestead Meadows. Toodle-oo.

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