This one’s a week out of date, but I’m trying to populate some initial content here… so what the heck.

Saint Elmo is a ghost town located roughly 13 miles west of Mt. Princeton Hot Springs Resort. Founded in 1880, it was a bustling mining town through the early 1920s when, after the closure of the Mary Murphy mine, the town began to decline. In its heyday, the town included “a telegraph office, general store, town hall, five hotels, saloons, dancing halls, a newspaper office, and a school house.” The Mary Murphy Steakhouse at the nearby hot springs resort was later named in honor of the mine.

Today, the town is listed on the National Record of Historic Places. Local preservation groups maintain the buildings left on the main street, and a few more recent houses are located nearby. An inn operates during the warmer months and, from what I’ve been told, the area is swarmed by families of friendly chipmunks during the summer.

I drove up to Saint Elmo last weekend for a short snowshoe hike – my first real hike since my ACL replacement surgery in September. It’s easy to park in town and access nearby snowmobile, cross-country, and snowshoe trailheads.