Breckenridge!

A Jeeper's guide to the famous mines and elusive ghost towns around Breckenridge, Colorado. Step-by-step driving directions, clearly-illustrated topo maps, photographs and statistics, such as peak elevation and jeep road classification, help ghost town explorers to actually find the hideaway townsites they seek. Detailed histories of each site make this book a must for successful exploring around one of Colorado's most popular gold rush era towns. The high-altitude camps along the skyscraping Boreas Pass narrow gauge railway route including Boreas, Congers, Dyerville and Farnham, invite exploration. The bustling 1880s communities of Preston, Braddocks, Buffalo and Delaware Flats echo with reverberations of the past. The ghost towns of Rexford, plus Tiger and Swan City and their rich neighbors, Parkville and Swandyke , all located along the gold rich Swan River, make an exhilarating day trip. Explorers can make a morning of the visit to Wapiti, atop rich Farncomb Hill and 1860s-founded Lincoln. Along the way, visitors can search for gold flakes, grains and nuggets using the book's section, "How To Pan for Gold." Not only ghost towns but famous mines await visitors to Breckenridge's dazzling "Golden Horseshoe," an especially rich area of mineral deposits. The historic Wellington Mine, Reiling Dredge, Wire Patch Mine, Sallie Barber and Wakefield Mines, Gold Pan Shops, Washington Mine and Lomax Placer await adventurers using the "Explore the Famous Mines" section of the book. Finally, a walking tour of 1859-founded Breckenridge's National Historic District buildings provides savory details about 1800s business proprietors and residents. The saloon keeper who dueled the town doctor over a roving wife and the church matron whose inner walls stored decades of discarded whisky bottles are a few of the town characters.