With Spring upon us, I am returning to last year’s project of photographing Colorado ghost towns. I’ve been mapping out these ghost towns on Google Earth and figuring out which ones I want to visit and in which order I should visit them. It’s easy to get caught up in the mountain mining ghost towns, but the variety of these towns in Colorado is much wider than simple abandoned gold mines. Many of these towns on the plains east of the mountains and some are actually quite historical.

I had a partner in crime for several of my excursions last year, not that we were actually committing crimes, but you get what I mean. Last week, my buddy Ricky and I picked up where we left off, sort of. We tried visiting the ghost town of Russell Gulch which is a few miles away from Central City, Colorado. It was a bust of a photography trip when we discovered that the recent snows hadn’t melted enough to make for a safe drive to the old ghost town. The Tacoma got us close, but we didn’t want to risk getting stuck in snow, so we abandoned the effort and opted instead for a nice BBQ lunch in Idaho Springs. I call it food replacement therapy.

Today’s photograph is from the ghost town of Rustic, Colorado. Interestingly, the town is located about 10 miles away from my cabin in Red Feather Lakes and I’ve driven past it many times over the years. I made a visit to the old town last summer just to photograph what was left of the town, which isn’t much. But, it too has a good spot for food replacement therapy as it has a restaurant less than 1/4 mile from it at the Glen Echo resort. A frequent venue from my moose photography trips.

As things dry up and warm up here in Colorado, I’ll be writing more about this subject, so stay tuned.