Founded in the 1870s and peaking at a population of around a couple thousand in its 1890s heyday, St. Elmo is a short drive northeast of Telluride and has various building left, including a working general store and a couple of quaint accommodations such as the Ghost Town Guest House, which you can use as a base to not just explore the town but also other historic nearby towns and outdoorsy areas with some great hiking trails.Adam Baker
Some 11,200 feet (3,415 meters) up in the Rocky Mountains, Animas Forks is on an unpaved road called the Alpine Loop, a drive of just over two hours from both Telluride and Durango. Once billing itself as “the largest town in the world” (but adding in small print “at this altitude”), it was founded by prospectors in the 1870s and was abandoned in the early 1920s. Now looked after by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, its nine remaining wooden buildings can be freely explored, and there’s some interpretive material from the BLM – but that’s about it. If you want more of a “living-history” (aka theme-parklike) experience – and an entertaining place to stay and eat –head to another nearby onetime mining town, Silverton, which has been somewhat theme-parkified.
Read more in my post The 7 Grooviest Ghost Towns of the USA´s Old West.
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