by John Bryant

Created on: July 15, 2008   Last Updated: April 18, 2011

Colorado Springs, Colorado is a beautiful city with many attractions, including the Air Force Academy, Garden of the Gods, Pikes Peak, the U.S. Olympic Training Center, the North American Air Defense Command in Cheynne Mountain, and the Professional Rodeo Hall of Fame. Another attraction lying only 48 miles to the west of Colorado Springs, though, is one not very well known beyond the state. In several visits to Denver and Colorado Springs I had always wondered about the town with the so "western" name, Cripple Creek, but I had never visited. My wife had served at FT Carson in the early 1970s but she knew Cripple Creek had changed a lot since then, too. My wife and I with a friend from Denver decided to see for ourselves what those changes were.

Cripple Creek, Colorado was a gold mining "boomtown" in the last decade of the 19th Century with stories similar to those of other boomtowns in the American West: saloons, bordellos, ramshackle housing, and, always, tough prospectors and miners struggling to make a living. When the times in Cripple Creek were good, they were very good with the mines around the town producing more wealth than any gold mining region in American history, e.g., pulling gold from the ground worth more than $18 million in 1900 alone. Abandoned mining equipment can still be seen on the mountainside overlooking the town.

The town had lost its luster early in this century, though, and, by the end of World War II, most of the mines were exhausted and closed. Although many of its buildings built around the turn of the century remained, the town was for almost half a century merely a shadow of its former, boisterous self and it was slowly dying. That changed in 1991 with Colorado's legalization of gambling!

Although Cripple Creek is really a small town, it is now the home to 24 casinos, many housed in refurbished one hundred year old buildings from the town's beginning. In fact, one of the reasons behind the legalization of gambling in the state was to preserve and enhance the historic character of several towns, including Cripple Creek. By law, Colorado casinos must pay a portion of their profits into funds which support historic preservation and outdoor recreation in the state. It's a little easier to justify losing a few dollars with that in mind, isn't it?

It is clear the main street of about five blocks in Cripple Creek is a beneficiary of the casinos' success and their contribution to the state's preservation funds! The casinos' interiors are

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