Blacksmith tools on Iowa Hill
Many placer mining artifacts can be viewed on the Iowa Hill guided snowshoe tour, hosted by the tour guides of the Breckenridge Heritage Alliance. It’s a fun way to spend a couple of hours on a beautiful mid-morning winter or spring day. You can head up the trail by yourself and see the relics and interpretive signs, but then you’ll miss all the extra cool facts imparted by the tour guide, and well as access to interior of the restored miners’ boardinghouse. It’s the original structure and has been restored with artifacts from the time period. The walls still bear some of the original newspapers used to line them for insulation.
Snowshoeing on Iowa Hill
Breckenridge was a hotbed of both hydraulic placer and dredge mining “back in the day”, late 1800′s and early 1900′s. The remains of dredging can still be seen along the Blue River north of Breck — all those huge piles of rocks you may have wondered about driving into town on Route 9. The dredge boats pretty much turned the river upside down.
Check out a short (two-minute) video of just a few of the things you’ll see and hear by clicking on the image below.
Iowa Hill Snowshoe Tour video
The tour is also available in the summer months.
Categories: Around Breck
Tags: Breckenridge Heritage Alliance, Breckenridge history, Iowa Hill Snowshoe Tour, placer mining, snowshoeing
great piece! very interesting. The meat grinder attached to the table in the cabin is exactly like the one my mother had, and I remember her using it until the 19960′s and then it disappeared.