Imagine the layers of history in Summit County. Why, deep under the surface of your Breckenridge CO real estate, there may be buried loot or booty left behind by one of the Colorado scoundrels mentioned in Mary Ellen Gilliland in her books about Breckenridge, Frisco, Dillon, Keystone, and Silverthorne. Real estate in Summit County may offer more than meets the eye.
There could be artifacts left in Breckenridge by nomadic tribes. Both the White River and Middle Park Utes came here during the summertime to hunt. More likely, deep down under, we’d find more gold and silver and other precious gems and minerals. But if we mine those riches, we’ll lose our beautiful homes in Breckenridge and the richly rewarding experiences of our ski trips and warm-weather golfing trips.
According to Gilliland, it is true that ten years after an 1898 robbery, some local children playing on a mountainside near Kokoma discovered two gold watches, a chain, and a pearl-handled revolver. Thankfully, the monogram on one watch led authorities to the owner, Robert Foote, who had been robbed at gun point by the notorious Pug Ryan. Mr. Foote returned to the site with the children and uncovered still another treasured object, a large diamond that he had been missing for ten years.
With all of the ruckus and lawlessness that accompanied the gold and silver rushes into the Rocky Mountains, who knows what else we’ll find. If one person staked a claim, hundreds more would hurry to the area to look for more gold. Some mining camps created mighty strict rules to deal with the claim jumpers and robbers. If someone robbed a stagecoach at 6:00 a.m. and was tracked down and put on trial, that person could be hanging from a tree by 2:00 p.m. Even so, plenty of scoundrels like Pug Ryan were very hard to catch in the forested mountains. (Pug, identifiable by a PUG tattoo on his arm, was finally captured during another crime in Washington State.)
Our communities slowly refined themselves over the following century. Towns incorporated and created bylaws and infrastructure and services. Dedicated citizens built comfortable houses, churches, schools, grocery stores, hotels, post offices, banks, and drug stores offsetting the array of saloons and red-light districts. After the gold and silver rushes ended, the smaller communities stabilized themselves until the coming of the Eisenhower Tunnel which cleared the way for the modern ski resorts and vacation towns.
With our yards and hillsides covered with several feet of snow during many months of the year, who has time to search for buried treasure? But, if you happen to uncover a tin can someday while you are planting a tree or putting in a fence post, take the time to look inside.  A chunk of gold is bringing in quite a lot these days.
For information about real estate in the county, call Jonna Beardsley of Breckenridge Associates at (970) 453-2200 or (800) 774-7970.
