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Good Tuesday morning from the San Luis Valley!

This week brings a mix of the practical and the serious.

Bear activity is up across the Valley and a new state law changes what happens if you leave garbage where a bear can get to it.

Monte Vista's new Cobblestone Hotel is hiring ahead of its fall opening.

And in Costilla County, officials have formally declared a law enforcement staffing emergency as the Sheriff's Office continues rebuilding.

We're also taking a history detour to Waverly in Alamosa County, and out to Spar City, a Mineral County ghost town with an unusual second life.

Let's get into it. 🌄

 Preserving the stories of places time forgot.

Spar City: The San Luis Valley Ghost Town That Refused to Die 

High in the mountains southwest of Creede is a place with one of the more unusual stories among the San Luis Valley's old mining settlements.

Spar City boomed, collapsed and nearly became another Colorado ghost town — but then something remarkable happened. People came back, not for the silver, but to save the town.

Today, more than 130 years after prospectors first rushed into the area, Spar City still exists.

Silver in the Mountains

The story began in 1892, when the Creede silver boom was already drawing prospectors into the mountains of what would become Mineral County.

Prospector John Fisher discovered pieces of silver-rich float scattered across the mountainsides south of Lime Creek. Float is mineralized rock that has broken away from its original source, and the discovery convinced prospectors that a major silver deposit must be hidden somewhere nearby.

The new settlement was initially known as Fisher City, after Fisher, and was also called Lime Creek. Before long, however, the name Spar City took hold, a reference to the spar and quartz found throughout the area.

The early assays gave miners plenty of reason to be excited. Historical accounts report surface samples ranging from about 40 to an extraordinary 2,500 ounces of silver per ton.

There was just one problem.

No one could find where all that rich material was coming from.

Prospectors searched for what they called the "mother chimney" — the main underground vein they believed had produced the mineral-rich rocks scattered across the surface.

They never found it.

A Town Springs Up Almost Overnight

That didn't stop the rush.

By July 1892, only months after the first discovery, about 300 people were living in Spar City, with roughly that many more prospectors working the surrounding hills.

Buildings quickly replaced tents.

Historical accounts describe a surprisingly substantial community with grocery stores, saloons, restaurants, dance halls, livery stables, an assay office, sawmill and lumberyard.

A stage and hack line connected Spar City with Creede, carrying passengers, supplies and mail into the isolated mountain settlement.

Spar City even had its own newspaper. On September 24, 1892, the Spar City Spark began weekly publication.

The town's post office had opened a little more than a month earlier, on August 16. At its height, estimates place Spar City's population somewhere between 500 and 600 residents. For a brief moment, it looked as though another permanent mining community might be taking shape in the mountains outside Creede.

Then Everything Changed

Spar City had the misfortune of being born at almost exactly the wrong time.

In 1893, the collapse of the silver market devastated mining communities across Colorado. The effects were particularly severe around Creede, where nearly everything depended upon silver.

Spar City was hit especially hard. The town still had not discovered the rich underground ore body prospectors had been searching for. When silver prices collapsed, exploration and investment dried up.

The boom stopped almost overnight. People who had rushed into Spar City only a year earlier began rushing back out.

Conditions became so difficult that residents reportedly struggled to obtain basic food. Creede residents organized assistance for their neighbors, including meat and flour for families remaining in the camp. It was an extraordinary reversal.

Only months earlier, Spar City had been promoted as one of the area's most promising new mining camps. Now its residents were struggling simply to eat. By 1895, the population had reportedly fallen to only about 20 people. The Spar post office closed on August 23, 1895.

For most Colorado mining camps, that would have been the end of the story. For Spar City, it was only the end of the first chapter.

The Ghost Town Gets a Second Life

After most of its residents departed, Spar City sat largely quiet.

Then, in the early 1900s, a group of people from Kansas saw something entirely different in the abandoned mining town.

They weren't primarily looking for silver. They were looking for a place to spend their summers in the Colorado mountains.

Historical accounts differ somewhat on the exact timeline. Sources indicate that Kansans began acquiring and restoring the abandoned settlement around 1905, while historian Caroline Bancroft records that Charles King of Hutchinson, Kansas, and associates formally took over the townsite as a summer club in 1913.

Whatever the precise sequence, their decision changed Spar City's future. Rather than dismantling the abandoned buildings, the new owners repaired and reused many of them. Old hand-hewn log cabins became summer residences. The original jail survived, complete with bars over a window. Perhaps most remarkable was the survival of the town's two-story Free Coinage Hotel, later converted into a community hall. The old mining camp had become something almost unheard of among Colorado ghost towns:

a living community again.

Preserving a Piece of the Past

Over the decades, Spar City evolved into a private summer community. Historical accounts describe ownership organized around a limited number of shares, with cabins associated with the members.

The community also took steps to preserve the appearance of the old mining camp. Additions and improvements to the cabins were expected to remain compatible with the character of the original buildings.

That preservation is one reason Spar City looks very different from many other abandoned mining settlements in Mineral County.

Places such as Stumptown and Weaver largely disappeared, while only ruins remain at Bachelor City.

Spar City survived. Not because the mines eventually produced a fortune, but because another generation decided the little town itself was worth keeping.

A Ghost Town — But Not Abandoned

Spar City remains an unincorporated community in Mineral County today, sitting at roughly 9,466 feet elevation in the mountains southwest of Creede. It is important, however, to understand that Spar City is private property.

Although photographs and historical accounts sometimes describe it as a ghost town, it isn't an abandoned historic site open for public exploration. Visitors to the surrounding country should respect posted signs, gates and private property.

That distinction is also what makes Spar City's story so unusual.

Most ghost towns are places where people once lived.

Spar City is a place where history never completely left.

The miners came looking for a legendary silver vein they never managed to find. Their town flourished for barely a few years before the Silver Panic swept it away.

Yet the cabins, hotel, jail and memory of the community survived because decades later another group saw value where the miners had not. Not underground. But in the town itself.

Historical information for this article was drawn from Mineral County historical records, COGenWeb's history of Spar City, the Western Cover Society's postal history records, SAH Archipedia, and historian Caroline Bancroft's writings on Colorado ghost towns.

This week's Community Spotlight goes to SLV GO! (San Luis Valley Great Outdoors), the Valley's leading trail-building and outdoor-recreation nonprofit.

Originally formed in 2013 as a citizen coalition and formally recognized as a 501(c)(3) in 2018, SLV GO! works to connect people to the outdoors by expanding trails, parks, and public-land access across all six counties of the San Luis Valley. It's the only organization working collectively with nonprofits, businesses, federal agencies, and municipalities to improve health and quality of life through trails and outdoor recreation here.

The organization runs on three full-time staff, more than 140 volunteers, and over 40 partner organizations — including the Great Outdoors Action Team, a six-person trail-building and stewardship crew that handles design, layout, and construction on federal, county, city, and private lands.

Since 2015, SLV GO! has helped build more than 120 miles of community trails across the Valley.

In a region this large and this outdoor-oriented, SLV GO!'s work quietly shapes how residents and visitors alike experience the Valley's public lands.

🌐 slvgo.com   📍 Serving all six San Luis Valley counties

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💡 Tip of The Day

With bear activity up across the Valley, secure garbage in a closed garage, shed, or wildlife-resistant container, and only put it out on the morning of collection — it's the law now, and it keeps bears wild.

No-Wrap Smoked Ribs with Potato Salad & Herb-Butter Corn

Here’s what was on our table this week: smoked baby back ribs, a small batch of homemade potato salad, and soft, buttery smoked corn on the cob.

I’ve made ribs a number of different ways over the years, but for this meal I went with a simple no-wrap method at 250°F. I seasoned the ribs the night before with my own 7-ingredient pork rub, let them rest overnight in the refrigerator, and skipped the barbecue sauce entirely.

The idea is simple: let the rub, smoke, and pork do the work.

No-Wrap Smoked Baby Back Ribs

The night before cooking, remove the membrane from the back of the ribs if it is still attached and trim away any loose pieces of meat or excess fat.

Coat the ribs generously on all sides with your favorite dry pork rub. I don’t use a binder. I simply apply the rub directly to the meat, cover the ribs, and refrigerate them overnight.

The next day, heat the smoker to 250°F. Place the ribs on the smoker bone-side down.

Then comes one of the most important parts of the whole cook:

Leave them alone for the first two hours.

Don’t rush to spritz them, and don’t keep opening the smoker to check on them. Those first couple of hours give the seasoning time to set and allow a good bark to develop.

After about two hours, check the ribs. If the bark has set, begin lightly spritzing as needed. Apple juice works well, but you can use whatever spritzing liquid you prefer. The goal is to add just a little moisture without soaking the ribs or washing away the seasoning.

After that, a light spritz about every 45 to 60 minutes is usually plenty if the ribs look like they need it.

Continue smoking at 250°F until the ribs are tender. Baby backs will often take somewhere around 4 to 5 hours, but don’t rely only on the clock.

Look for the meat beginning to pull back from the ends of the bones. You can also use the bend test: lift the rack near the middle with a pair of tongs. When it bends easily and the bark begins to crack slightly, the ribs are getting close.

Once tender, take them off the smoker and let them rest for about 10 to 15 minutes before slicing.

No sauce needed.

Small-Batch Herbed Potato Salad

The potato salad is adapted from a recipe I’ve made for years. The original makes a large potluck-sized bowl, so for this meal I scaled it down to about four side servings.

• 1 1/4 pounds Yukon Gold potatoes, diced
• 2 hard-boiled eggs, chopped
• 1/3 cup coleslaw dressing
• 1 1/2 teaspoons spicy brown mustard
• 3 tablespoons chopped green onion
• 1/8 teaspoon celery seed
• 1/4 teaspoon dried basil
• 1/8 teaspoon dried thyme
• 1/2 teaspoon dried dill
• 1/4 teaspoon salt, or to taste
• 1/8 teaspoon black pepper
• 1/2 clove garlic, finely minced
  
  

Place the diced potatoes in a saucepan, cover with cold salted water, and cook until fork-tender but still holding their shape. Drain well and allow them to cool slightly.

In a bowl, combine the coleslaw dressing, spicy brown mustard, green onion, celery seed, basil, thyme, dill, garlic, salt, and pepper.

Gently fold in the potatoes and chopped eggs. Cover and refrigerate for at least a couple of hours before serving.

The original recipe calls for mayonnaise, but I use coleslaw dressing instead. It adds a slightly sweeter, tangier flavor and works especially well with smoked pork.

Soft Herb-Butter Smoked Corn

Since the smoker was already running at 250°F, the corn went on there too.

For especially soft and tender corn, leave the husks attached. Carefully pull them back, remove the silk, spread herb butter directly over the kernels, and then pull the husks back into place.

Smoke the corn at 250°F for about 75 to 90 minutes.

For even softer corn, loosely wrap the ears in foil during the final 20 to 30 minutes. That traps steam and helps tenderize the kernels even more.

When the corn comes off the smoker, pull back the husks and brush it with a little more herb butter.

Getting It All on the Table

This is a meal that works well with a little advance preparation. The ribs can be seasoned the night before, and the potato salad can also be made ahead and left to chill.

On cooking day, start the ribs about 4 1/2 to 5 hours before you hope to eat. Leave them alone for the first two hours, then begin spritzing lightly if needed.

During roughly the last 75 to 90 minutes of the rib cook, add the prepared corn to the smoker.

When the ribs are tender, let them rest for 10 to 15 minutes while you finish the corn with a little more herb butter and bring the potato salad out of the refrigerator.

The finished plate turned out just the way I was hoping: smoky ribs with a dark bark, creamy herbed potato salad, and soft buttery corn on the cob.

Sometimes a good meal doesn’t need to be complicated. A good rub, steady heat, a little smoke, and enough patience to leave the ribs alone can go a long way.

💡 ANSWER TO TRIVIA QUESTION: Spar City!

What started in 1892 as a silver-mining camp called Fisher City near Creede went bust like so many Colorado mining towns — before an unusual second act as a private, shareholder-owned summer cabin community that still exists today.