I kicked off my new project this week. Ghost towns of Colorado.

Colorado has at least 1,500 ghost towns, with about 650 with visible remains still present.

I don’t think I’ll be visiting every one of them though. Just the major locations with still standing abandoned buildings.

Most of these ghost towns are related to mining, farming or railroads.

I recently hit three ghost towns in one day with buddy Ricardo Muiño. The towns of Dearfield, Keota and Grover in northeastern Colorado.

Being a Colorado based photographer, I’m concentrating some effort on exploring the history of the state. Fortunately, a lot of this is well documented so getting to them and learning about the history is not a very complicated task. But, it’s mostly new to me.

This project has been fun so far. Hanging out with a buddy on a road trip, eating at greasy spoon diners in the middle of nowhere, seeing how people lived 100 years ago. Colorado has a boom and bust history. Tales of murders, calamity, toiling in remote locations, dreams come and gone. It’s a colorful history to explore.

I’ve compiled a list of about 40 ghost towns, some of which I’ve already photographed. I’m marking them in my DeLorme Atlas, so when I visit an area, I can travel to the locations that are near me.

These days, apart from the occasional photographer, a lot of these locations are now relegated to cowboys and truckers.