St Elmo

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St. Elmo, was founded in 1880 and is now a ghost town. St. Elmo is located in the heart of the Sawatch Range, 20 miles Southwest of Buena Vista in Chaffee County, CO. To this day it is one of Colorado’s most preserved ghost towns. Nearly 2000 people settled in this town when mining for gold and silver became evident. The mining industry started to decline in the early 1920’s and in 1922 the train discontinued service. There are currently 8 year round residents in this area.

St. Elmo was originally named Forest City but was later changed because of the multitude of towns with the same name. The name St. Elmo was chosen by Griffith Evans, one of the founding fathers, who was reading a novel with the same title.

The town was at its pinnacle in the 1890’s. St. Elmo had everything a town during the 1800’s needed. It included a telegraph office, general store, town hall, 5 hotels, saloons, dancing halls, a newspaper office and a school house. The Denver, South Park and Pacific Railroad Companies all had lines that traveled through St. Elmo. There were 150 patented mine claims within the area. The majority of the people who lived in St. Elmo worked at the Mary Murphy, Teresa C., The Molly or the Pioneer Mines. The Mary Murphy mine was the largest and most successful mine in the area. While the other mines eventually shut down, the Mary Murphy Mine continued until the railroad shutdown in 1922.

Once the mining industry shutdown, St. Elmo drastically declined in population. Miners searched elsewhere for gold and silver and the business district in St. Elmo shutdown as well. Few people continued to live in the town. Postal service discontinued in 1952 once St. Elmo’s postman passed away.