Georgetown Mining Region

The town is named for a man who did not stay to see it rich. George Griffith, a Kentucky farmer, found gold at the foot of what became Griffith Mountain in 1859, and with his brother David laid out George's Town; by spring the brothers had staked the whole valley as a homestead for their father. The gold proved thin; George left, and died in Texas in 1880. The fortune came from silver, first found in quantity at the Belmont Lode in September 1864 by Robert Steele, once provisional governor, with James Huff and Robert Layton.

What the plaque says

This tablet is the property of the State of Colorado Commemorating the historical importance of the Georgetown Mining Region The Griffith Lode (2500 ft. N.E.), later a silver producer, was discovered June 17, 1859, by George W. Griffith, for whom Georgetown was named. Town site claimed June 29, 1860. The Belmont Lode (5.7 miles S.W.), first important silver discovery in Colorado, located Sept. 14, 1864. Boom productions in 1870s and 1880s. Metal output totals $50,000,000. Erected by the State Historical Society of Colorado from the Mrs. J. N. Hall Foundation and by the Georgetown Library Association 1935

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Hotel de Paris — steps away
  A French cook's hotel in a silver town, kept for twenty-five years by a man whose name turned out not to be his own.
• Georgetown Loop Railroad — 0.5 mi
  Scrapped in 1939 for $450, rebuilt a century after it first opened, and running again over the bridge that crosses its own track.
• Mount Blue Sky — 8.6 mi
  Rosalie for a painter, Evans for a governor, and since 2023 a name the Cheyenne and Arapaho asked for, at the top of North America's highest paved road.
• Central City Opera House — 12 mi
  Built by a mining town for itself in 1878, outshone by Tabor within four years, and reopened in 1932 with Lillian Gish.

More markers nearby

• McClellan Opera House — steps away
• Hotel de Paris — steps away
• Berthoud Pass — 7.6 mi
• South Park — 21 mi