Ashcroft’s abandoned ski dream still shapes the valley below Aspen
Just 15 minutes from Aspen, Ashcroft feels like a place paused between eras. Empty log cabins sit beneath the Elk Mountains, Castle Creek runs quietly through the valley, and the old mining settlement has been left with little more than weathered timber, open sky and the sound of wind in the aspens. In summer, the stillness is striking. In winter, the silence deepens into something almost complete.
The contrast with Aspen is sharp. One town became a global ski destination lined with luxury boutiques and multi-million-dollar homes. The other was stripped back by time, war and bad luck until it became a ghost town with a remarkable alternate history: it nearly became Colorado’s next great ski resort.
The possibility was not far-fetched. By the early 20th century, Ashcroft had already shown it could attract people, investment and ambition. The same valley that once drew silver prospectors later drew developers who saw in its surrounding peaks the ingredients for a European-style winter destination. The idea was bold, and for a moment it seemed to have momentum.
Silver built the town, then emptied it
Ashcroft’s first boom began in 1879, when prospectors flooded into Colorado’s Roaring Fork Valley in search of silver. Within a year, the town had become one of the region’s hottest mining settlements. Ore in Ashcroft sat closer to the surface than in Aspen, a geological advantage that gave the town early commercial appeal and made it an attractive bet for investors.
At its peak in 1882, more than 1,000 people lived there. The settlement had hotels, mercantile stores, a bowling alley, a dance hall, 14 saloons and Pitkin County’s first school. For a brief period, it had all the noise and bustle of a frontier town expecting a long future.
That future did not arrive. Within a few years, the population had fallen to about 100, and many residents and businesses drifted toward Aspen instead. Mining camps often rise quickly and collapse just as fast, especially when richer seams, easier access or stronger economic prospects appear elsewhere. Ashcroft’s decline left behind a built environment that time could slowly erase.
By the 1930s, almost every building had been abandoned.
A ski resort plan that reached the funding stage
The next chapter began with skiing, not silver. Three business associates who had skied in Europe — Ted Ryan, T J Flynn and Olympic bobsled gold medallist Billy Fiske — looked at the empty valley and saw a winter resort with international ambition. They formed the Highland Bavarian Corporation and brought in Swiss mountaineer André Roch to assess the terrain.
Roch toured the surrounding peaks on skis and selected Hayden Peak as the center of the plan. Ashcroft would serve as the base village, a Bavarian-style settlement beneath what would have been a major ski mountain. The vision was sweeping: a tram from Ashcroft to Hayden Peak, dozens of ski runs and several chairlifts. At the time, it would have been Colorado’s first major ski area and, in the context of the era, the world’s highest.
Funding followed the plan. The project secured $650,000 in state and federal support, and development was ready to begin. Steel had been ordered for lifts and tram infrastructure. Washington was backing the idea because the resort was expected to help drive national tourism.
Then World War Two intervened, and the steel was diverted to tanks and fighter planes.
The ski town that might have remade the valley disappeared before construction could begin.
Aspen took the opportunity Ashcroft lost
While Ashcroft stalled, skiing began to take hold farther down the valley. Roch helped teach locals how to ski and launched the Roaring Fork Winter Sports Club, which later became the Aspen Valley Ski and Snowboard Club. He also marked a run on Aspen Mountain that still carries his name: Roch Run.
Ryan helped install the first lift in Aspen, a crude “boat tow” built from old mine hoists, a second-hand motor and a pair of sleds. The setup was improvised, but it worked. Aspen’s transformation into a ski resort had started, and Ashcroft’s chances of claiming that role diminished quickly.
A single lift changed the region’s trajectory.
Today, the differences between the two places are obvious within minutes of driving between them. Aspen hums with ski traffic, high-end restaurants and winter wealth. Ashcroft offers a much quieter encounter with the same mountains, without chairlifts, cable cars or the commercial pulse of a resort town.
What remains is the valley itself
Ashcroft now exists as a preserved historical site surrounded by natural beauty. A handful of cabins remain, including structures that once served as a dance hall and a saloon. In winter, visitors move through the area on Nordic skis or snowshoes along 22 miles of groomed trails and snowshoe routes. In summer, the same ground opens to hiking and horseback riding.
The experience depends on human effort. There are no lifts, no snowmobiles, no easy glide into the hills. That absence has become part of the appeal, especially for visitors looking for something more intimate than Aspen’s polished resort experience. The valley still carries the feel of a place that never quite became what its boosters imagined, and that unrealized scale has left it open, quiet and unusually intact.
Johnny Wilcox, whose family has long been involved in Ashcroft skiing and hospitality, describes the area as off the grid. There is no Wi-Fi and no cell service. In winter, reaching it takes intention, and the effort is part of the reward. A night ski with a headlamp brings visitors closest to the old mining-and-skiing overlap, with no visible chairlift and no signs of the development that might have followed.
Ashcroft’s history is filled with aborted futures, but those failures preserved the valley in a way success might not have. The mining boom collapsed. The ski resort never materialized. Aspen rose instead. What remains is a rare kind of mountain place: not a destination built by design, but a landscape left behind by competing ambitions.
A fortune of failures preserved the valley
Lookabill’s description of Ashcroft as “a fortune of failures” captures the strange legacy of the town. Each boom created the conditions for the next opportunity, and each collapse stopped development before the valley could be overwhelmed by it. The result is a place that still feels close to its frontier past, even as it sits only a short drive from one of America’s most famous ski towns.
Ashcroft never became Aspen. The ghost town survived instead, and the mountains kept the final say.