Alma Colorado Ghost Town

Alma, Colorado sits at 10,578 feet, the highest elevation for an incorporated town. This small town is a nearly a ghost town located in Summit County between Fairplay and Breckenridge, south of Hoosier Pass. Today, Alma is home to nearly 200 people, but was once a booming mining town with an abundance of silver in the late 1800s.

Buckskin Joe, established in 1859, was the mining camp that once flourished just up the road from the modern day Alma, Colorado. The mining district was formed by a small group of prospectors when placer gold was located in the river nearby. An eccentric man named Joseph Higgenbottom, who wore buckskin clothes and was therefore called "Buckskin Joe", led the group of prospectors.

At its zenith, Buckskin Joe was booming with saloons, gambling halls and traveling minstrel shows. The street was lined with stores, saloons, a newspaper, a post office, a courthouse, a mill, and three hotels. But that all came to end when the smallpox virus spread throughout the whole town, and today Buckskin Joe is referred to as the Alma Ghost Town.

The Alma cemetery was once the 'Buckskin Joe' cemetery. Many of the dead are miners and their families who died during the terrible epidemic, and many of the unmarked graves belong to them. The cemetery is located in a very beautiful area featuring Aspen trees and a great mountain view. There are hawk feathers with small bells attached, tied to branches throughout the cemetery. There have been restorations to existing headstones and fences. Small, rustic, handmade crosses mark graves that have been anonymous for more than a century.

There is also the story of a beautiful dancer that entertained in the camp. Everyone knew here as 'Silver Heels'. During the epidemic when many of those who were able, left Buckskin Joe's to avoid the illness. Silver Heels reportedly, stayed to nurse her friends and admirers. The smallpox ran it's course but not before she too fell victim to it. She lived but her once beautiful face was terribly scarred. No one knew where she went after that. But years later, there began the reports of a veiled woman walking among the graves of the smallpox victims, sometimes weeping.